


Pick A Side

by arealsword



Category: Sanders Sides (Web Series)
Genre: Acting, Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Body Horror, Canon Compliant, Cuddling & Snuggling, Dubious Gaslighting, Ethical Dilemmas, Friendship, Gen, Hypothetical Murders, Intrusive Thoughts, Moral Philosophy, Mugging, One Shot Collection, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Suicidal Thoughts, Thomas needs a nap, Violence, the trolley problem, unreality
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-13
Updated: 2020-07-09
Packaged: 2020-12-14 13:01:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 54,442
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21016196
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arealsword/pseuds/arealsword
Summary: Thomas and the Sides coexist in their own slightly dysfunctional way. There’s no pre-existing guidebook to follow when it comes to living and interacting with quirky extensions of your own personality, after all.Latest chapter: Thomas doesn't want to make coffee anymore.





	1. Life Is A Party And I’m The Piñata

**Author's Note:**

> i adore the relationships between Thomas and his sides, and really there’s not enough exploration of that in fic. or, you know, anywhere. so this is my attempt to fill in some of the void! all the chapters here will be standalone because I don’t think I can write anything extensive and/or continuity-heavy. there will be more whenever i am thusly inspired. I absolutely positively 100% accept prompts, so drop them in the comments if you want something specific!! (or something vague, I’m not picky). 
> 
> heads-up – i will probably not be doing any shipping at all. that’s just not my thing!
> 
> this first story’s a bit vague and plotless but hopefully further chapters will have more interesting stuff! gimme ideas. i’d love ideas.
> 
> also the title of this is likely to change.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Honestly?” Thomas slid a bit further down the wall. “Going home is definitely a priority, but – right now, I’d just really rather be talking to you.”
> 
> “Talking to yourself’s one of the first signs of madness, you know,” Virgil said. “Might want to get that checked out.”

From where he was sitting on the ground, his back to the wall, Thomas had a perfect view of the rest of the party. The crowd of dozens upon dozens of people he barely knew, the flashing lights, the bodies writhing and bouncing in time to a thumping bassline that was so loud and distorted it could hardly even be called music anymore. The contents of the plastic cup in his hand – some kind of sugary soda liquid that he couldn’t have named if he tried – had long since gone flat, but he was still taking intermittent sips out of it, like the extremely petty masochist he apparently was.

“I told you this was a bad idea.”

Thomas shut his eyes, took a very deep breath, and sighed. “You did,” he said, and took another sip of the flat soda as Virgil slid down the wall to sit right next to him, close enough that their arms were nearly bumping. “And, like usual, I didn’t listen.”

“Yeah, well.” Virgil pulled his legs up to his chest, curling his arms around them. He looked paler than usual – the dark shadows under his eyes were even more distinct in the wild, flashing lighting of the party. “I’m kinda used to it. Don’t beat yourself up over it.”

Thomas winced. “Still. Sorry, Virge.”

“Well, we’re both stuck here until your friend decides it’s the right time to leave, so it’s not like I’m the only one suffering the consequences of your actions.” Virgil smiled, a touch darkly. “Result.”

Thomas sighed, and gulped down another mouthful of soda. “Well, at least I’ve got someone to talk to,” he said. “That does help a bit, honestly.”

Virgil blinked, looking genuinely surprised. “What – you mean me?”

Thomas glanced over, mirroring his look of confusion. “Yeah, I mean you – who else is here that’s going to keep me company when I’m feeling like this?”

“Thomas, I am literally the _reason _you’re feeling like this.”

“Well, _yeah, _but that doesn’t mean I can’t take advantage of your presence. Your fun, awesome presence!”

Virgil sighed. “You know I’m not fun.”

Thomas smiled. “You’re _very _fun to be around.”

“Lies.”

“You’re the life of the party.”

“I’m the death of the party. I murder parties for fun. It’s my cool hobby. I’m the party-killer.”

“You light up my life, Virgil!”

“Like a gas fire lights up the kitchen it’s about to consume. Speaking of which, are you sure you remembered to turn the stove off before you left the house?”

“Yes, I triple checked because you wouldn’t stop bugging me about it – don’t dodge the point of this! You work hard at keeping me alive and safe, and you’re doing your best at that, and _Virgil I appreciate you a whole lot!_”

“I’d appreciate it a whole lot if you’d listen to me when I tell you not to go to parties you aren’t going to enjoy.”

“You know I’m not going to listen, right?”

“I do, and yet for _some _reason I keep on trying. It’s ridiculous.”

“You’re ridiculous,” said Thomas instinctively.

“I thought I was the life of the party?”

“That too.”

They grinned at each other for a moment, and then Thomas laughed softly. “It’s strange,” he said thoughtfully. “Of all the things I feel anxious about right now, the fact that people might think I’m weird for sitting here in the corner and talking to thin air isn’t one of them.”

“Mm, yeah. I’m weird like that.” Virgil bounced his leg up and down a bit.

They sat in silence for a minute or two. The music switched, somehow becoming even louder than before. Thomas bit his lip, and then stood up – reflexively offering Virgil a hand to help him get up, before belatedly realizing that he, being a literal figment of his imagination and therefore incorporeal, couldn’t actually take said hand. Virgil smirked slightly at this as he got up, but seemed genuinely pleased about the gesture anyway.

“What’s going on?” he asked.

“Gonna find somewhere a bit quieter,” said Thomas, already scanning the area for a suitable spot.

“Oh, thank god,” said Virgil, obviously relieved. “This noise is absolutely wrecking my ear drums. I’m all for loud, depressing music but this is barely even music anymore. What’s the _point _if you can’t even hear the lyrics?”

“I couldn’t agree more – ”

They ended up in the corridor right outside the bathrooms – hardly the most glamorous place to wait out the rest of a party, but definitely a lot quieter than where Thomas had previously been sitting. Not many people were there, either, which kind of made it the perfect place for the two of them to sit down, facing each other, walls at their respective backs, and carry on chatting aimlessly. The only partygoers who were there at all were mostly drunk, and if any of them found it weird that Thomas was carrying on an animated discussion with himself, nobody commented. Maybe they assumed that he was drunk, too.

“Any thoughts?” Thomas asked, curling his legs to one side.

“On stuff to do?”

“Yeah.”

“You could scroll through Tumblr for a bit,” he suggested half-heartedly.

Thomas shook his head ruefully. “Phone battery’s dead.”

“...which is why you can’t call Joan or anyone else to come pick you up. Right.”

“Uh huh.” Thomas scrubbed a hand roughly through his hair. “I mean. Hypothetically speaking. I could just ask someone to borrow their phone?”

“But you’re not going to do that,” said Virgil, rolling his eyes.

“Correct, because talking to strangers is _stressful _and if I do that and they say no, I will straight-up die on the spot.”

“Glad we’re on the same page.”

“Honestly?” Thomas slid a bit further down the wall. “Going home is definitely a priority, but – right now, I’d just really rather be talking to you.”

“Talking to yourself’s one of the first signs of madness, you know,” Virgil said. “Might want to get that checked out.”

“Very funny. Where are the others?” Thomas idly crinkled the top of the plastic cup between his fingers, stressing it back and forth – trying to see how much pressure he could apply without snapping the plastic. “Some more company might be nice.”

Virgil sighed, raised three fingers into the air. “Logan refuses to come anywhere near this mess of a social disaster zone, because apparently logic isn’t needed here since you were allegedly completely out of your mind to come here in the first place.”

Thomas cracked a tiny smile. “‘Out of my mind’? That doesn’t sound like Logan.”

“I – look, I was paraphrasing.” Two fingers, now. “Same goes for Roman – who needs creativity when you’re sitting alone in a corner, talking to nobody except yourself?”

“Talking to strangers is _stressful_,” Thomas muttered. The plastic cup went _crack-crinkle _in his hands. 

“No arguments here, bud,” Virgil said, and regarded his one remaining raised finger. “Patton’s – well, he’s asleep. I _guess _I could go wake him up if you really want to talk to someone else?”

“No, it’s – ” Thomas sighed. “Don’t. It’s fine. He probably needs the rest, you know, after – everything. All these moral dilemmas I’ve been having recently. _Ugh._” The plastic finally gave, cracking and splitting the cup open along the edges. He scowled at it briefly, and then set about methodically and systematically ripping it into ragged, transparent strips. “Remind me why I thought this was a good idea, again?”

“You didn’t,” said Virgil rather bluntly.

“Ah, yes. Agreeing to something I don’t want to actually do because of peer pressure. I remember now.” Thomas stared blankly at nothing for a moment. “Isn’t it weird how peer pressure works even when you’re aware of it?”

“Yeah, it’s wild.” Virgil regarded the patterns the flashing lights from beyond the corridor were casting with an expression of complete distaste. “You know, if Logan was here, he’d say something like, uh,” he wrinkled up his nose, and then waved a hand, conjuring a familiar pair of glasses up onto his face from nowhere. “The influence of the desire to conform on an individual is actually quite fascinating, when you think about it,” he said, affecting a slightly louder, more confident voice than usual. “Insert some detailed, meticulously researched evidence here. And then,” he added, raising the glasses briefly from his nose, “Patton makes a pun based off that evidence –”

“And Roman calls someone an inventive, possibly slightly insulting nickname based off a fictional character,” Thomas added, a faint smile playing at his lips.

“And I say something sarcastic and pointed to interrupt the brewing argument, because everybody’s ignoring the most important thing at hand, and then,” Virgil lowered the glasses again, and adopted the Logan-voice again, “here’s something very important that will change the direction of this video entirely! Now it’s time to wrap everything up and solve our emotional problems in a neat, orderly manner.”

“And then we proceed to actually solve those problems.”

“And then apologize to each other for everything we’ve done in our lives, ever.”

“And then you all sink out, and I turn to the camera,” Thomas said, nodding, “and say something heartfelt and touching to the audience, and then I go, _take-it-easy-guys-gals-and-nonbinary-pals –_” he made the standard closing gesture with his hands, grinning into an imaginary camera, “_peace out!_, and cut to the end card! Roll credits!”

“We did it,” said Virgil. “We boiled all of our interactions with each other down to a thirty second skit.”

“Yeah, and it’s _great_,” Thomas said.

Virgil looked like he was about to argue for a moment, then he just sighed and relented. “Yeah, it’s... not awful.”

Thomas shook his head, grinning. “I can’t wait to do another video with you guys. The last one was, what, three months ago? That’s far too long. I miss having complete mental breakdowns on camera while you guys make ridiculous jokes and break into song at random points in the conversation around me, which – come to think of it, it’s kind of a bizarre thing to miss.” He sighed. “But it’s hard work to make the Sides videos. The scripting, and the costumes and the filming and the,” he grimaced, “_editing_, it’s all just – a lot.”

“Trust me, I get it,” said Virgil. “I’m getting anxious just thinking about it.”

They lapsed back into a thoughtful sort of silence.

“Good Logan impression,” Thomas added offhandedly, after a few moments of consideration. “You had the glasses-adjusting bit down perfectly. Have you been practicing that?”

“Maaaaaybe.” Virgil was perfectly still for a second, and then he said, with the tone of voice of someone trying to deflect away from the fact that he had been practicing a mimicry of his friend for reasons that may or may not have been related to winning arguments over the breakfast table, “I bet you could do better?”

“What, a better Logan impression?”

“Yep.”

“Really?” Thomas laughed. “Nah. No. It wouldn’t be fair.”

“Why not?”

He blinked, momentarily thrown off by this. “Well, because... it almost feels like cheating?”

“You think you’d be too good at impersonating us?” Virgil asked, giving Thomas a sardonic sideways glance. “Because that’s not egotistical at all.”

Thomas huffed out a laugh, shrugged out his shoulders, and then very purposefully straightened himself up, keeping his entire body carefully controlled, even as he remained sitting down. He blinked once, adjusted an imaginary pair of glasses, and then raised his eyebrows pointedly at Virgil. “Falsehood,” he said, tone suddenly clipped and precise. “At least, partially so. Although there may be some amount of narcissism to Thomas’s claim, the fact remains that he is all of us, in more ways than one. It logically follows that he would be able to impersonate us to a fairly accurate degree.”

Virgil’s eyes widened, and he leaned closer, as if trying to inspect Thomas to make sure he was the same person. “_Damn_, that’s downright uncanny.”

Thomas frowned, inclining his head to one side. “I have no idea whatsoever what you’re talking about. How could the way I’m behaving be comparable in any way to tinned food? It’s not – “ He cut himself off, throwing his head back in a sudden burst of laughter. “_Ha!_ – sorry, that – that was not great. He wouldn’t say that. Logan’s hard to do. He’s so much smarter than I am, honestly. I can barely string two words together without a script most days.”

“Okay, now _that’s _not true,” Virgil said. “By definition, Logan’s only as smart as you are.”

Thomas shrugged and made a so-so motion with his hand. “He’s the one who ended up with most of my brain cells, I think.”

Virgil visibly hesitated, and then began, “so, can you-?” before abruptly shaking his hand. “Never mind.”

“No, go on,” Thomas said. “It’s not like we’ve got anything else to do.”

“...can you do Pat?” Virgil said.

Thomas blinked, and then wriggled his fingers energetically, frowning. A sudden change seemed to come over him. His entire body seemed to loosen up dramatically, and a radiant, goofy smile spilled over his face. “Sure thing, kiddo!” he chirped. “Doing impressions of people isn’t exactly my forte, but I’ll do my best to_ impress-h_ you with my skills!”

The side of Virgil’s mouth curled upwards slightly. “Was that meant to be a pun?”

“What?” Thomas clapped his hands to the sides of his face in abject horror. “No, definitely not! C’mon, Virge – identity theft is no joke!”

Virgil snorted quietly, and then hid his face in his arms to hide the fact that he was smiling.

“Patton’s definitely better at puns than I am,” Thomas said, dropping the act and sinking back into a more comfortable, less energetic stance – although he was still grinning slightly.

“Again, going by definition, he’s only as good at it as you are,” Virgil said, lifting his head out of his arms. A tiny smile remained on his face, barely there. “But for real? Yeah. He’s better than all of us at the puns.”

“So – got any requests?” Thomas asked, eyes bright and fingers bouncing happily against the ground. “As long as we’re doing this, I mean.”

Virgil shrugged. “Sure. Do me?”

“Ooh, tough one. Okay, hm.” He frowned, and tapped a finger against his lips, apparently deep in thought.

“I don’t know if I should be pleased or offended that you apparently find me hard to play,” Virgil said, lightly amused.

“Maybe neither? It’s mainly because you’re right here in front of me. There’s a lot to live up to.” Thomas nodded to himself, and then said, “all right,” and brushed his hair over his face before slouching, _dramatically_, and glaring out through his fringe at Virgil. He held that for a second or two, before shrugging and straightening up again with a sheepish grin. “That’s it,” he said. “That’s all I have.”

Virgil rolled his eyes. “Really? You didn’t even try, man.”

“All right – uh, I’ll try again. Just, give me something to say, I guess? A line, or – you know, whatever. Something you’d usually say.”

“Capitalism is an unsustainable, resource-consuming system that needs to be overthrown as quickly as possible for the benefit of all humanity,” Virgil said blandly. “Eat the rich.”

Thomas stared at Virgil for a long second. “When have you ever said that?”

“Technically never, but I’m always thinking it.”

Thomas shrugged out his shoulders, shook his hair so his fringe was falling over his eyes again, and fell back into the slouch. “Capitalism is unsustainable and ultimately destructive for all of us,” he said acidly, the tone of his voice lower and far more intense than usual. "Also, we’re all going to die. Have you remembered to turn off your stove?”

Virgil’s face brightened, and then he frowned. “Did you really need to make me sound like a government informercial about gas safety at the end there?”

“Eat the rich,” Thomas said after a long moment, and then he sang, in a surprisingly clear voice, despite remaining in-character, “_when I was – a young man – my father took me into the city – to see a marching band –_ ” before breaking off into a giggle fit again. “Sorry! Okay, how’d I do?”

Virgil nodded, almost approvingly. “Well, I’d never start randomly singing like that, but... not bad. You could give Deceit a run for his money.”

Thomas grimaced. “Man, I sure hope not. Actually – come to think of it – ” He frowned for a second, and then tilted his face away from the lights of the party so half of his face was in shadow. He flexed his fingers again, and then steepled them carefully in front of his face, drumming them against each other, before shooting Virgil a distinctly un-Thomas-like smug smirk. “Insert pretentious incorrect philosophy position here,” he intoned. “Lies. Lies, lies, lies, lies. Lies! _Ssssss._”

Virgil stiffened noticeably, no longer quite so amused. “Thomas...”

“I’m a slimy boi!” Thomas continued, somewhat gleefully, tapping a finger against his lower lip, and then he caught sight of Virgil’s expression, and dropped the Deceit impression immediately. “Oh no. Was that-?”

“Extremely uncomfortable? Uh, _yeah._” Virgil shuddered. He had started to inch away from Thomas, but had stopped when he had stopped speaking. “You are _far _too good an actor.”

Thomas’s face crumpled, and he scrubbed a hand across his face, looking completely horrified and more than a little distraught. “Oh my gosh. Virgil, I’m so sorry, I didn’t even think. Well – I did think, but I – I thought that since I wasn’t actually being serious about it – ”

Virgil was shaking his head. “It was like he’d taken over your body or something – for a second there, I thought – like, obviously it’s impossible, there’s no way, and there’d be no point to it, anyway, but I _thought _–” His voice cracked and warped slightly, as he broke off.

Thomas’s breathing was starting to become a bit ragged. “Hey. Hey, Virge? Can you, uh – calm down a bit? I’m feeling, kinda, sort of, you know – _hh_ –”

Virgil’s eyes widened as he realized what was happening, and he closed his eyes as he made a concerted effort to calm down – inhaling, holding a breath deeply, then exhaling, all in a regular, even pattern. After a few cycles of this, he opened his eyes and regarded Thomas warily.

“You good?” he asked.

“Think so,” said Thomas, who had crushed the remains of his long-since shredded plastic cup tightly in one hand so forcefully that the palm of his hand was bleeding a bit. He looked down at it, and winced, pressing it to the fabric of his jeans. “I can’t believe I managed to make _you_ anxious. Isn’t it supposed to be the other way around?”

“It’s a two-way sort of thing,” said Virgil, looking kind of guilty that anything of the sort had even happened in the first place. “Uh, Logan would be able to phrase it better, but – your current state affects mine, and vice versa?”

“That makes sense, I guess.” Thomas checked his palm again. The wound wasn’t deep – just a few scratches, really. “Seriously. I’m sorry. I should’ve guessed that was going too far – I just thought it might be fun to – you know, make fun of him a bit?”

“Yeah,” said Virgil, clearly exhausted. “Yeah, no – I get it. Don’t worry about it.”

That brief, uncomfortable interlude had kind of killed the mood, and neither of them really felt like going back to their diversion of impersonating their friends. So they returned to their time-honoured tradition of sitting and not talking to each other at all.

“You know what?” said Thomas, after a few minutes of this awkward silence. “I’m gonna get something else to drink.”

“Your mouth _is _pretty dry,” Virgil said grudgingly, because of course he’d know about that.

Thomas smiled and stood up, a hand to the wall for balance. He hesitated, and then asked, almost tentatively ,“you coming?”

“Well, it’s not like I can stay behind without you,” said Virgil, without any real protest present in his voice. He uncoiled himself from his position on the ground and also stood up, a halfway smile slanting its way across his face. “Besides, who else is going to warn you about your freshly-poured cup of Spite, which is almost certainly poisoned and going to kill you messily and painfully if you even think about drinking it?”

“Don’t forget the hundreds of people who are definitely staring at me and judging everything I do,” Thomas said, relaxing – they were back to normal. Everything was fine.

Virgil raised an eyebrow. “Exactly. Careful, Thomas. You’re gonna put me out of a job.”

“Gosh, I sure hope not,” said Thomas. “I’d be lost without my anxiety.” He grinned over at Vigil fondly, and Virgil returned the smile as he fell into step next to Thomas – heading back towards the noise and chaos of the party.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> note on deceit - i personally don't see him as especially sympathetic or nonsympathetic. to me, he just _is_ \- just like all the other sides, he's a part of thomas and therefore is only about as good and/or evil as thomas himself is. however, _thomas_ (at least at this point) sees deceit as a Slimy Evil Boy. that's thomas's (and virgil's!) viewpoint! do not be deterred from requesting deceit-based stuff. he's a real interesting character.


	2. your late-night thoughts get pretty sick, dude

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For maybe the first time in his life, Thomas thinks, completely unironically, _oh good, the Duke’s here. _
> 
> Unsurprisingly, nobody else seems too pleased about this turn of events.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For Miranda Way’s prompt, _‘can you maybe do a story where remus helps out thomas and the others somehow and they're all surprised and grateful that he's actually done something nice’_. There are a very limited number of situations in which Remus’s presence is genuinely helpful, so this is – probably not exactly what you wanted. Sorry. 
> 
> Past tense just wasn’t working for me. Let’s try something new, y’all!
> 
> **Warnings:** Knives, threats, and Remus is there – so some uncomfortable/gory/body horror/sexual imagery courtesy of him. Also, some vaguely noncon non-romantic uncomfortable kissing.

“Give me all of your money,” says the guy, which is possibly the biggest cliché in the history of mugging random strangers on the street, but Thomas doesn’t really feel like pointing this out to the person who currently has a knife to his throat. Even though he wants to. He really super wants to.

“Thomas Sanders, don’t you _dare_ try point out stylistic flaws in this guy’s mugging attempt!” Virgil snaps, his voice warping and distorting with stress and panic – pressed up against the wall of the alleyway right next to Thomas, knuckles white and hands bunched up in the fabric of his hoodie. “Do you _want _to die? Is _that _what you want out of this experience? Because doing that is a really great way to get yourself killed!”

...and while Virgil is entirely correct, ‘pointing out stylistic flaws in your assailant’s robbery style’ is only one of quite a long list of things that you shouldn’t be doing while getting mugged. The very next thing on that list of things Not To Do is ‘having your imaginary friends there with you while it’s happening’. Unfortunately, Thomas’ imagination is always entirely too overactive, and there’s not much he can do about it. Honestly, things would be a lot easier if Virgil wasn’t here and turning the freakout dial all the way up to eleven, and providing furious unending commentary on how stupid Thomas is being. Yes, fine, Virgil is _right _and he’s just doing his job, and it’s keeping Thomas alert but it’s also making his brain blank out and buzz with endless static and warning bells, and he can barely keep himself from not crying, let alone working up the brainpower to figure out what he should do next.

_Speaking of brainpower, _Thomas thinks, and Logan blinks into reality – nonexistent one moment and there the next. He takes the briefest of moments to orient himself and scan the situation, before blurting – looking genuinely shocked and horrified at the events unfolding – “for God’s sake, just give him the money, Thomas! I shouldn’t even have to be here for you to figure that out on your own – it’s barely logic, it’s just common sense – ”

(It should be worth mentioning that all of this occurs in less than a handful of seconds – practically bullet time. Thomas’s mind tends to move a whole lot quicker when he’s stressed, and right now it’s racing at almost unprecedented speeds. Although it doesn’t seem to be doing him all that much good.)

“I don’t _have _any money!” Thomas says desperately, half to Logan and half to his unnamed attacker. “Listen, I was just heading back to my house from the park, across there –” He’s gesturing wildly, as wildly as he can manage with his head caught in a chokehold and the sharp edge that’s far too close to his skin for comfort – so not very wildly at all, he’s just kind of pointing vaguely without moving at all. “ – and my house, it’s over there, I can just – if you let me go, I’ll – listen – ”

He has no idea where he’s going with this, and it shows. There’s probably a reason for this, and that reason is that his logic is not available for use in a hostage negotiation situation – it’s otherwise occupied.

“_Don’t tell him where you live!_” Logan shrieks, hands going up to tug furiously at his own hair in probably the most emotional outburst he’s ever exhibited in the entire time that Thomas has known him. “Why – Thomas_, why would you do that?_”

“We’re going to die here,” says Virgil, voice crackling and rolling like radio static in a thunderstorm. His usually soft tone is getting louder and louder as more desperate panic pours into it. “Even if he lets us go right now he’ll_ know where we live _and he’ll come to our house and he’ll come into your bedroom while you’re sleeping and he’ll steal all of your stuff and he’ll kill you and then he’ll find your phone and find where your friends and family live and he’ll hurt them and he’ll hurt all of them and –”

Thomas really wants to tell them both to shut up, but doing so would require him to speak out loud, and he doesn’t think this mugger would very much appreciate being told to shut up, even if he’s not strictly the intended recipient of the message. And speaking of which, the mugger is talking again. Thomas tries to tune out Virgil and Logan briefly, to try to hone in on what he’s saying because it might actually be important –

“What the hell do you mean you don’t have money!?”

– never mind.

Maybe he can talk his way out of this? Appeal to the mugger’s better nature? It’s always worked on Steven Universe, so maybe –

Patton pops into existence, and would probably have a joke to contribute about said popping (pop into existence, pop, dad – it’s a metaphysical pun! Those are the best sorts of puns!) if things weren’t in the process of going completely and irretrievably to hell in a handbasket.

“Oh,” he says, freezing in place. “Well – gosh, this isn’t good, is it?”

Which is an understatement if Thomas has ever heard one. The fact that Patton isn’t saying anything else – no nervous rambling, no encouragement, no worried comments, no misplaced cheerfulness – is an indication that his half-baked Power of Friendship plan was doomed from the beginning. In fact – when Thomas chances a split-second glance over in the direction of the others – he sees that Patton is currently preoccupied with trying to calm Virgil down by patting at his arm and muttering to him, and also trying not to cry.

So there’s no help from the emotions department, apparently. And he’s _still_ being mugged.

Thomas could really use a creative solution to this problem right now.

Out of the corner of his eye, Thomas sees Roman form out of nothing, his usual trill of triumphant music cutting off abruptly with a screech of unhappy string instruments as he sees what’s going on. He’s squashed up tightly between Logan and Virgil, which none of them look too happy about, and the alleyway really is getting very, _very _crowded. His mouth opens, then closes, and then open and closes again, as he apparently struggles for an inventive, relevant thought that’ll be helpful and useful to their current circumstances.

“Punch him!” Roman yells, panicked – voice cracking slightly.

...Thomas could really use _another _creative solution to this problem. One that doesn’t involve punching people. Because he is... not very physically strong. At _all. _

“ – hey! Hey, come on – kid, are you even _listening _to me – “

Thomas snaps back to the harsh reality of the alleyway with the sharp kiss of metal at his neck and the realization that he’s been daydreaming. _Daydreaming. _While being mugged. _Only me, _he thinks, _only me._

“ – you have a car, right?”

“I have a-?” Thomas has to swallow, because his throat is very, very dry. “Yes? I have one, but it’s – ”

“Good. Good.” He feels the guy’s breath falling harshly on the back of his neck. “Give me the keys, and then take me there. _Now._”

He doesn’t know who this guy is or why he wants Thomas’s money or keys or car or _anything, _and he doesn’t especially want to know either, but he can still hazard a couple of wild guesses. None of them are good. “– but it’s parked at my house, and that’s not –”

Honestly, he has no idea what he’s going to say next. His mouth is kind of running along ahead of him, and he’s stumbling along behind trying to keep up and wondering how on Earth he’s going to ramble his way out of this one. But thankfully – or maybe not, it’s hard to tell – he’s cut off by an unexpected interruption, because there is a really, _really _dreadful smell, and a really horrible sounding tritone-esque piano smash, and then someone shrieks with abject glee and springs into sight directly in front of Thomas.

For maybe the first time in his life, Thomas thinks, completely unironically, _oh good, the Duke’s here._

Unsurprisingly, nobody else seems too pleased about this turn of events. Roman goes all tense and all of a sudden there’s a sword in his hands, and Virgil makes as if he’s going to run forward and full-body-tackle Remus right out of existence, but Logan – of all people – stops him, catching him at the elbows with a surprising amount of force. “Wait,” he says – Thomas is registering all of this out of the corner of his eye and of his mind, only very absently and dimly – “the Duke’s presence might actually be exactly what we need right now –”

He catches Virgil’s response of, “_how could he be exactly what we need_,” and Roman’s, “my brother being here is exactly what we _don’t _need! Let me just – ” but the rest is lost because Remus takes a few steps towards them, surveys the situation with his mace slung almost casually over one shoulder, and then starts to laugh. It’s a horrible laugh, horrible in how familiar it is – Thomas has a tendency to double over with genuine laughter, laugh himself right out of the frame in videos. _This _is that, but shoved roughly through a cheese grater.

“Not the time!” Patton says desperately, but it’s thin, pointless, useless. Morality doesn’t have much of a place in this situation, and it does nothing except make Remus laugh even harder, throwing his head back, screeching at the sky. Thomas doesn’t know _why _he’s laughing, it’s completely inappropriate to the situation – it doesn’t even make any sense. Then again, nothing that Remus does ever makes any sense. That’s kind of just how he rolls. And oh, does he roll. Rolls like an out-of-control tyre that’s fallen loose from a car and is careening wildly down the road and off the nearest cliff. And into a pit of some really nasty-looking filthy animals; possibly animals that are all having enthusiastic, impressively choreographed sex.

Then Thomas looks at Remus properly, and Remus breaks off laughing like a hyena to look at him back, and their gazes meet. There’s a really bizarre moment where the Duke’s near-permanent maniac smile actually drops right off his face, and he almost looks serious for a moment. His eyes are dark and beady, caked and decorated with ridiculous amounts of something that Thomas very much hopes is only eye shadow. His costume is gaudy and flashy, glimmering in the dim alleyway light. He looks nothing like Thomas. He looks everything like Thomas. As usual, Thomas wants to throw up at the very sight of him, but throwing up is yet another one of those things that you shouldn’t be doing in the middle of a mugging.

“What are you staring at?” says the guy with the knife – because from his point of view, Thomas is indeed staring at a fixed point several feet with a look of faint disgust on his face, apropos of nothing at all. He twists his neck to look, and then looks back, in puzzlement. To him, nothing is there.

Not for the first time, Thomas wishes that the frequent visitors to his consciousness were actually corporeal. He’s a pacifist, but... well, quite apart from anything else, it really would be very, _very _satisfying for Remus to appear out of literally nowhere and surprise this guy with a (suspiciously realistic-looking) mace to the head. (And Remus _would _do it. Without hesitation. And with an unhealthy amount of enthusiasm, to boot.) Or for Roman to pull a sword on the guy. Or for Virgil to wander up silently behind him, and whisper _boo _in that hoarse menacing voice of his and scare the living daylights out of him. This is all just wishful thinking. Yet another one for the list.

“You’re going to take me to your car,” says the guy, apparently dismissing Thomas’s ‘staring into nowhere’ thing as inconsequential. “At your house, or wherever the fuck it is, I do. Not. Care. And you’re going to give me your keys, and I will drive off, and I won’t have to slash your neck or do anything else we might both regret. _Is that clear?_” 

Remus’s face splits open into a ghastly, absolutely unrestrained smile. His eyes practically glitter in the dim light, sparkling like the fabric of his black-and-green costume. “Oh, Thomas, you’re afraid of _this _moron? He’s only got one knife! Just the one!” His voice is high-pitched, the emphasis on certain words and phrases all wrong; a drill bit relentlessly boring into a solid sheet of metal that was never meant to have a drill pressed against it. “Knives are _boring. _Anything he can do with that knife I can do with a shard of glass. I can probably do _more _with a shard of glass. Do we have any shards of glass handy? I’ll help you rip his face off.”

“Remus,” says Logan, sharp and low – the sound still managing to carry quite clearly across the alleyway despite that. “Focus. You have a job to do here.”

Remus pulls a face at Logan – tongue lolling out appallingly, eyes rolling unnaturally in his sockets – and then he looks back and grins, sharp around the edges in ways that Thomas’s smile never has been and never could be. “Well, fingernails will do in a pinch,” he says, then, “showtime! Come on, Tommy, let’s see what we’re made of!”

Thomas takes a deep breath. He kind of already knows what he has to do right now, so – yeah, okay. Showtime.

The opening lines come surprisingly easily – maybe because they’ve been sticking around in his head for a while now.

“Have you ever imagined killing your own brother?” Thomas says like it’s only just occurred to him, whipping his head around abruptly to face his attacker. He leers up at the other guy with all the unhinged, uncanny confidence that he can muster.

“Thomas, what the _fuck_,” Virgil says from behind him.

Remus whoops and catwhistles enthusiastically, the sounds falling awkward and flat in the dull alleyway acoustics. He does it like he couldn’t care less about the consequences. Thomas draws inspiration from that, and starts yelling every obscenity that he can think of in an extended stream-of-consciousness tirade. Things that he would normally never dream of saying, that would almost certainly get him demonetized if he were were saying them on-camera, things that he’s almost certainly going to agonize about endless later. Remus starts cheering louder, offering suggestions – some of which Thomas steals and repeats, snatching them and rephrasing them on the fly, a bit like listening to and taking onboard Roman’s suggestions while in the midst of improv. Everybody else has kind of faded into the background somehow, leaving only Remus and Logan there. And Remus and Logan working together are a dangerously compelling combination.

The guy with the knife starts yelling too. He’s confused and angry, wants Thomas to shut up or calm down or _stop stop just stop_, and he’s the one that has the knife? So maybe they should be listening? – but Logan shakes his head. “Keep going,” he says, voice calm and reasonable over the chaos of Remus and Thomas’s combined efforts. It makes no sense to keep going from where Thomas is standing, but Logan _is _logic, and when has listening to the voice of reason ever been a bad idea? Logan knows what to do. Logan’s going to save him, save them. It’s going to be fine. Thomas gasps in a deep breath of air, and, on a whim – and based on the shift in Remus’s suggestions – switches tactics slightly.

“I will rip your flesh apart with my bare hands,” he screeches, and starts clawing wildly at the guy’s skin as if he actually has the capability to follow through on that threat. In a distant, removed part of his mind, he wonders what the hell he thinks he’s doing. _Threatening _has never been his modus operandi. Oh, sure, he can act – can play the villain, can cut a reasonably menacing figure in a performance or two, but there’s a big difference between his more presentational form of acting and the representational style he hopes he’s hitting right now. A _really _big difference. If it seems too cheesy, too overboard... “I’ll peel it off your face, snap your hands off, make your eat them, _pull your tongue out of your mouth and drag it around your neck and strangle you with it – _” He’s quickly flagging – running out of things to say, running out of things to rant.

“Try screaming!” the Duke advises. “Scream like you’re being murdered, or like you’re murdering someone, or like you’re having sex and then the person fucking you starts to murder you and then you start stabbing them back –”

Thomas is already doing it. Wordless screeches, at the top of his lungs, so loud and so forceful it’s grating up and down his throat something awful – harsh and wild, enough to make his old vocal instructor weep. At this rate, he’s not going to be able to speak louder than a whisper tomorrow, but the hope is that he’ll be around tomorrow for that to be able to happen. And, well – if nothing else, it’s doing _something. _The guy no longer has a knife to Thomas’s throat, is no longer restraining him. He’s several paces away, still holding that knife in his direction, but now he looks legitimately terrified. Which is both dreadful and oddly gratifying, although he doesn’t have much time to think about that because he’s still got an awful lot of screaming to do while he considers what to do next. Running isn’t safe, because what if the guy comes running after him? No, he’s got to see this through to the end – and he switches back into words, because the words are coming easy now. They’re not pleasant words in the least, and he thinks (although he doesn’t dare to look) that Roman must be completely aghast. And Remus is yelling words right along with him, matching his tone and mania with gleeful abandon, although the things he’s yelling aren’t quite the same as the things Thomas is yelling. Their words are overlapping, intermingling, bleeding into each other like sharp, eye-searing watercolor – he can barely tell where his words start and Remus’s words start and his words end and everything ends ends ends –

“Claw out your eyes and pop them like grapes, and, scissors on your wrist, you can press really, _really _hard and slice right through the veins and then you’ll bleed out, and, you – _what if your blood was replaced with battery acid? _Can you _imagine _what that would feel like? Burning through your skin like paper, burning out your vision, burning your organs, BURN OUT THROUGH YOUR FINGERS, corroding contaminating burning everyone everything _everyone YOU TOUCH YOU’RE RUINING THEM YOU’RE RUINING ALL OF THEM JUST STOP BEFORE YOU BURN THEM – JUST LET YOURSELF DISSOLVE BEFORE YOU KILL THEM ALL _– ”

He’s dredging up every dark thought, every twisted musing, every warped consideration he can get the smallest semblance of a grasp on. His head’s pounding and he feels dizzy, and his heart is thumping in his chest so loud he’s surprised half the street hasn’t heard it and come to check on what’s going on. Stage fright has never been so immediate, so genuinely dangerous. He’s going so far off-script right now that it feels like running headfirst off a cliff. This is not his department. He can’t do this. _He can’t do this. _But at the same time, he can’t give the slightest indication that he’s not one hundred percent serious and committed to this, or –

There’s a clatter of metal and a flurry of running footsteps, and the guy is gone.

He’s _gone, _Thomas realizes, and he stops speaking, stumbling to an awkward halt mid-sentence. He blinks dumbly at the exit to the alleyway, unable to move or speak or think. Remus carries on spitting dreadful, unthinkable thoughts for a bit longer – but he, too, finds himself trailing off into silence.

The only thing to indicate that he had ever actually been there, threatening Thomas, is the knife that’s lying on the ground, abandoned.

“Hey, you should pick that up and tear out your own throat!” says Remus after a moment, beaming.

Thomas doesn’t bother to dignify that with a response, because he can’t think; can’t breathe. His arm goes flying out and he manages to catch onto a solid surface, and just in time, too, because he practically falls against the wall, panting. There are scattered cries of alarm from all around him as his knees buckle and he goes from there to the ground, and then the memory of a hand on his arm, and then it’s Logan and Virgil, tag-teaming the task of coaching him and coercing him into breathing like a normal, functional human being. And it’s _four-seven-eight, come on Thomas we don’t have all day to lie around in this alleyway doing nothing, _and _impeccably done, quite the impressive performance, all you need to do is breathe now, just breathe, _until he manages to get his hyperventilation under control and his heart is no longer pumping quite so fast. He sits, slumped against the wall, with five people that look more or less exactly like him huddled around him, staring down at him with worry and (in Remus’s case) impatience in their eyes. He sucks in one last breath, and then he’s equalized, more or less.

He looks up at everyone, and forces a smile. It feels weak, thready. “Hi,” he says to them.

“There you are,” says Logan, sitting back. He scrubs a hand across his face, looking exhausted and relieved. “How are you feeling?”

“That was... horrifying,” Patton says before Thomas can say anything – can really begin to start processing anything. And there’s no jokes there, no joviality. He sounds rather choked up, and he looks like he might actually be about to cry. “Thomas – kiddo – I know you were – you _had _to do that, but – I didn’t like it.” He pauses, his face going all weird for a second, and he reiterates. “I _really _didn’t like that.”

“Yeah,” says Thomas, all of a sudden feeling simultaneously very small and also like he’s taking up all too much space. Every word he says sounds too loud. “Yeah, I – I know. I don’t want to do that again, either.”

He notices that Roman is... well, he’s there. But he’s not talking. He gives Thomas a relieved almost-smile when he sees that he’s okay, but apart from that – nothing.

“If you don’t go taking spur-of-the-moment shortcuts through dark alleyways, then maybe you won’t _have to,_” says Virgil, but there’s no real heat to it. He sounds wrung-out and empty – just about how Thomas feels. Not surprising.

“I know. God, I know.” Thomas grimaces, adjusts his jacket, tries to get himself back into some semblance of order. He looks around, sees everyone uncharacteristically quiet. There’s a buzzing in his head, a faint ringing like tinnitus. He’s still hyped up on the nervous adrenaline of a fight that never really happened, and he’s pretty sure that as soon as he gets home he’s going to crash, and crash _hard. _“Not going to do that for a while – promise.”

“Well, as long as you’re promising,” says Virgil, and watches with a scary amount of intensity as Thomas struggles to his feet and stands up, using the wall to guide him.

“Six identical people hanging around together in a badly lit alleyway at night?” Remus chirps. “Sounds like the setup to a really, really, _really _great porno!”

“Not necessary, Remus,” says Logan, and then glances over at Thomas. “You should really consider pressing charges against that man, incidentally. Or at least alerting the authorities. Whatever his intentions, he could’ve very easily left you a lot worse of. And he could very easily try to rob someone else at knifepoint – someone without such...” Hesitation. “...such an enthusiastic backup plan.”

“Someone else could get hurt,” says Patton. “I don’t want anyone else to get hurt.”

“Look, I don’t know about – ” Thomas starts.

“We can leave all that until later,” interrupts Virgil, glowering at everyone. “In case you hadn’t noticed, Thomas is pretty much about to pass out right now. And if that’s going to happen, I’d really rather we do it somewhere _other _than here.”

“I do feel pretty bad,” Thomas murmurs.

“Come on. We’ve stuck around here long enough. We’re leaving,” says Virgil.

And so they leave. As simple as that. Except – no, it’s a tiny bit more complicated than that. But only a bit.

Getting home is a team effort – it always is. It takes Virgil to point out every shadow that could be a monster or attacker coming to get him, and Logan to calmly explain it all away, and Roman to assure them that even if they _were _real there would be absolutely no chance of them even laying their claws on Thomas, and Patton to lighten the dark mood caused by all that talk with a flurry of strategically-placed jokes and absurdities. This is normal, this is expected – this is _welcomed _because of its normality. The conversation is almost rhythmic as they glide through the same fears and rebuttals and claims and puns as always, smooth with familiarity. But now, for the very first time, Remus is there too. And he throws everything off. Virgil’s not pointing out any shadows at all because Remus is creating new ones from out of nowhere at all, and Logan’s furiously working overtime to refute each and every one as quickly as he can, but it’s – well. It’s pointless, to say the least. 

Roman is being very, very quiet. He’s trailing some distance behind all of them, sword sheathed and shoulders somewhat hunched, and he’s not even trying to start anything with Remus. No barbed comments. No creative nicknames. It’s like he has absolutely no idea how to interact with his brother – no idea how to interact with any of them, all of a sudden.

Patton is at Thomas’s side, quietly keeping pace with him. They’re shoulder-to-shoulder, and they’re holding hands – which, in this case, takes the form of Thomas kind of loosely curling his fingers around where Patton’s own hand is and keeping his arm swinging at roughly the same tempo. It’s not firm in the least. He can’t feel any sort of pressure, no heat from a nervous, sweaty palm – none except his own - but it’s still weirdly comforting.

And all the while, Remus babbles like a polluted brook.

“You know what’s interesting? Scissors are interesting! I could do a million and one things with a pair or scissors.”

“I don’t have a pair of scissors,” says Thomas. He knows he shouldn’t really be indulging Remus like this, but it’s hard to ignore him; even more so than usual – after all he’s done to help tonight, it would feel almost _rude. _

“No? That’s a shame! I’ve been thinking about what it’d be like to use them during sex recently! Imagine shoving them _right _up there, get ‘em nice and deep!” He makes a horrifyingly obscene gesture. “Cold and crisp! Sharp and tight! Brings a whole new meaning to _scissoring_, huh?”

Logan catches Thomas’s eye. They share a significant look, and then trade glances and faces at each other for a full fifteen seconds before they look away from each other again, neither one all that happy with the outcome of their silent argument. Logan wants him to ignore Remus, Thomas knows – to compartmentalize. His role in this particular adventure is over, so there’s no need for him to stick around for any longer than is strictly necessary. Acknowledging and responding to his outbursts is only going to prolong that. Which – fair enough. But at the same time, doing that would feel like denying the fact that Remus is a _person. _That he’s more than just a cardboard cutout of Thomas with a moustache and a mace, painted with all shades of gruesome thoughts and ideas and decorated with a sickening grin. Because he’s got to be more than that. The others are more than their roles – they_ are_. Logan is more than just logic; he can feel emotions and make jokes and grin in delight (as much as he tries to pretend he can’t). The very concept of morality has next to nothing to do with feelings and nostalgia, and yet Patton delights in both those things. Virgil has a caustic wit that’s razor sharp, and likes spiders and hot chocolate and alternative punk, and those aren’t anxiety, those are _Virgil. _And of course Roman, who has endless depths, who goes beyond the bounds of what _creativity _should be, who tries ever so hard all the time – _really _is trying to be _more._

They all contain multitudes, so why should Remus be any different?

He wants to consider it, consider the possibility that since Virgil isn’t the bad guy – is pretty amazing, all things considered – there’s a chance that Remus might be all right too, somewhere under all that body odor and glitter and disturbing thinking. He’s Roman’s brother, after all – there’s got to be _some _redeeming feature in there, somewhere. He just needs to find it.

But also – at the same time? He doesn’t want to. Remus is loud, disagreeable, disturbing. He worms his way into the cracks of his mind that Thomas least wants him to get into, squirms himself in and settles there like a disease or a slimy tentacled beast, and sits there, gurgling loudly to himself and anyone who might pass by. He’s annoying. He’s rude. He’s the unwanted houseguest, the horrible five-year-old who you’ve been tasked with babysitting for the rest of your life. Thomas doesn’t want to be friends with him. He doesn’t want to even interact with him, have to look at him. He wonders if that’s selfish of him. Self-actualization through reaching congruency with all parts of yourself is all well and good in theory, but there are parts of himself that Thomas really doesn’t like at _all._ Is he obligated to figure out a way to like them? Or does he just need to spend the rest of his life hating himself?

Thomas looks over at Remus, and Remus is still there, and Remus leers across at him like he knows exactly what Thomas has just been thinking about. Thomas swallows, and looks away.

Patton squeezes Thomas’s hand, and he swears he can almost feel it.

They reach Thomas’s house within a few short minutes, and everyone waits on the doorstep while Thomas fumbles for his keys and locates the right one to unlock his front door. Everyone seems to become a bit more solid – a bit more define – the very moment it opens. Being home is almost always an immense comfort, and coming home after an exhausting experience like this is absolutely no exception.

Roman heads in first, slipping past everyone carefully and quietly, and disappearing into the depths of the house. Patton gives a polite, less-enthusiastic-than-usual wave to Remus and then a more enthusiastic wave to everyone else, and then he’s following Roman – the sound of his footsteps hurrying after the prince echoing back towards them. After a moment of silence – and a moment of Thomas not moving in the slightest to follow them – Logan sighs, nods, and clasps a hand to Thomas’s arm for a brief second, before heading inside as well. Remus waits at the base of the stairs, grinning and hopping from foot to foot.

Virgil looks down at him; frowns, hovers. “You sure?” he asks Thomas.

“Yeah,” says Thomas. “Gotta deal with it sometime, right?”

Virgil frowns, clearly unhappy, but he nods. “I’ll tell Pat to put on some tea,” he says, and turns to the door, flicking Thomas a two fingered goodbye salute as he does so. He ambles into the house, and after a moment, closes the door behind him.

And then it’s just Thomas and Remus on the doorstep, regarding each other silently. It’s strange, because Remus doesn’t need to wait there for permission to enter like some oddly-textured, bright-eyed vampire. He could just walk straight in. Or not even that, he could just sink out here and now, head back to whatever strange and shady corner of Thomas’s mind he usually resides in. He’s not even really _out here, _just like he’s not anywhere at all except with Thomas, constantly. And yet. And _yet._

“This is the part where I kiss you,” Remus announces loudly, unashamedly. Thomas can’t help the jolt of instant disgust that shivers through his body at the very thought. Remus sees it, and seems to thrive on that reaction, puffing up and leering. “Or are you going to invite me in for casual, violent sex?”

“Remus,” says Thomas, disgusted but not entirely surprised. “Come on. I’ve had a long night.”

“Oh, I _know_,” says Remus, and springs up the steps in a movement that is somehow uncannily fluid and unsettling jerky at the same time, and then he gets really close. Almost nose to nose. He smells like a forgotten, rotting garbage bin left out in the sun too long. He beams at Thomas, and Thomas tries not to gag. “Fun, wasn’t it?”

“Not especially,” says Thomas. “Look, I just wanted to say –”

“Yeah, yeah, sure.” Remus rolls his eyes. “_Whatever,_” he says, and then he’s lunging in, pressing his mouth to Thomas’s, and he jams his tongue right in there. It’s dreadful and disgusting and messy and sickening and every bit as terrible as Thomas would have thought kissing himself would feel like, except worse, a million times worse because it’s _Remus _doing it, and, just – Jesus _Christ_. He screams a little bit, shoves Remus away so hard and so forcefully he goes tumbling backwards. He falls right off the stairs and onto the sidewalk, bouncing slightly in a way that no regular human being would ever be able to do. He giggles brightly and springs to his feet in one fluid movement. Blood drips down – thick, dark, viscous – from a large gash on his face. There’s no actual reason for blood to be there, Thomas hadn’t shoved him _quite _that hard, and he hadn’t hit the ground in any way that would have drawn blood or cut his skin. It’s just a Remus thing. He’s probably doing it for dramatic effect, for the shock factor. Thomas is too tired to be shocked by anything else, really.

“I just wanted to say _thank you,_” he says miserably. “That’s – that’s literally all I wanted to do. You helped me out tonight, so I wanted to thank you for it, because you were actually on my side for once, and – and – and you do _this._” He laughs humorlessly, drags a hand roughly across his face. “I don’t know why I bothered. You’re not – you make it impossible to express gratitude to, Remus!”

“Thank you very _much,_” says Remus, falling into a low-sweeping bow. “I aim to displease, you know!"

Thomas just shakes his head. “I don’t know why I bothered,” he repeats. He turns around, puts his hand on the doorknob, and is about to twist it open, when he becomes aware of the fact that Remus is now standing right behind him. He’s not doing anything much – he’s just there, and he’s just breathing – but he’s just a little too close for comfort.

“Sorry, Remus,” says Thomas quietly, not turning around. “You gotta stay outside.”

Remus sighs, huffs out a long breath of air, and then he nods. “I know,” he says. Resigned.

For a moment, Thomas is afraid that he’s going to lick the back of his neck, but he doesn’t do that. He just takes a step back, and lets Thomas open the door without another word. In the kitchen beyond, the sounds of low conversation and the kettle boiling can be heard.

Thomas steps through the doorway, and doesn’t look back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I, much like Thomas, wish that my imaginary friends could physically manifest to beat up people who are harassing me. 
> 
> To clarify! I super do not ship Sides/Thomas in ANY way, it’s just weird to me in so many ways. Remus, however, is gross. And kissing yourself is def one of those taboo things that he’s all over all of the time.
> 
> Thank you for all of your lovely words so far!! it’s been ultra encouraging. i love you all!!!


	3. Fallacy Somewhere

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I’m in hell,” Deceit says, squeezing the bridge of his nose with two fingers. “I am literally in hell. Life is a curse and existence is a prison, and I am trapped in the maximum-security wing with a group of ridiculous inmates who all consistently refuse to listen to a single word I say.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I swear, these get longer and longer every time.
> 
> Combined two prompts because I’m thrifty like that – from Snowdropthewolf, who asked: _‘could you do one where something happens to the lightsides, e.g. they get sick or stuck on an adventure somewhere and Virgil, Deciet, Remus and Remy have to try and help Thomas until they all get exhausted and fluffy. With lots of Thomas and Virgil fluff because I love them being cuddly with eachother.’_ and anonymous, who suggested, _‘when thomas gets sick, so do all the light sides however, the dark sides (including virgil) are pretty much the same, if not a bit more powerful. virgil taking care of the others/thomas? defending them against the dark sides?’_
> 
> Obviously I’ve taken some liberties for both. Remy’s not here because I’m sticking to Canon Sides for the purposes of this story (although i do love him. so much.) Also, I’m currently revising for my final philosophy exam, and I kind of maybe turned this into part of that revision process. Fair warning: you may learn things in this chapter. Hopefully they will be Correct Things, because if not I’m probably going to fail. 
> 
> Warnings: moral philosophy, Remus being himself (some sexual stuff, some light blasphemy), mention of hypothetical child torture/death.

Thomas is sick, and the worst bit about it isn’t that he’s gotten sick just when he had Big Plans to be Amazingly Productive. No, the worst bit is that he isn’t even _that _sick. If he was coughing and hacking up a lung, and vomiting into a bucket every fifteen minutes, and pale as milk and basically on the verge of death, that’d be one thing – he’d be justified in the act of burying himself underneath his covers and lying there for hours doing basically nothing.

But he’s not on the verge of death. He’s just got a headache, a very slight cough, and a general feeling of exhaustion, and he could absolutely get up and work on the outline for a script or two if he wanted to. And he _needs _to, because he’s running drastically behind schedule, but... well, he doesn’t want to.

He’s flicked through the scroll bar of basically every category on Netflix twice over and still hasn’t managed to find anything that looks even slightly appealing. He’s stared at a blank open Word document for a full fifteen minutes, waiting for inspiration to strike (spoiler alert, it hasn’t), and then he did it again an hour later with no new or interesting results. He’s tried scrolling through Tumblr but made it about six scrollbar lengths down his dashboard before coming to the depressing realisation that nothing there has made him laugh or so much as crack a smile. Youtube is about the same. There’s nothing really eyecatching or captivating for him, and eventually, he finds himself going through the comments sections of his videos to try to cheer himself up. And for the most part? It works. His fans are so unbelievably nice and sweet, and are apparently armed with an endless range of things to point out and squeal about and compliment him on.

But then there’s the one percent of comments that... aren’t.

He knows that it’s ridiculous to get hung up over things like this, because the people who say rude and hurtful stuff on the internet are the sort of people who aren’t worth his time in the least, but there’s just something about some of them that get to him. That stick in his mind and won’t come unstuck, and it’s not the downright nasty ones either. It’s the ones that are well-written and succinct, the ones that are just reasonable enough to make him stop and wonder – _do they actually have a point?_

He lets the hand that’s holding his phone fall to the mattress next to him, and stares at the ceiling blankly for a few seconds.

“Hey, guys?” he says to the empty room, voice a bit croaky from disuse. “Can you – is it a good time to talk?”

There’s just silence. Nobody emerges from out of nowhere. Nobody adjusts their glasses and makes a dry and devastatingly logical comment. No puns are made. Thomas looks around the room somewhat nervously, and tries again. “Logan? Princey?” No response. “Pat? Virge? You guys in there anywhere?”

More silence. It’s now getting to be a bit unnerving, because usually whenever Thomas asks if anyone’s around to chat, the response will be almost instantaneous – even if it’s only to let him know that, no, it’s probably not the time for that at the moment. Thomas pushes himself up so he’s sitting mostly upright, propped up by his pillows. He raises a hand up in the air, and tries doing that thing that he’s seen the others do a few times before – sweeping it upwards as if to lever up his Sides from the ground. He thinks Logan thoughts, hard – ties, organized folders, flashcards with memes on them – and does the hand motion a few more times, but nothing happens. He’s not feeling anything, either – no sparkling connection, no magnetic tug. He’s just a guy who’s alone in his bedroom, waving his arms around wildly.

“Am I doing this wrong?” he mutters to himself, and tries again, attempting to channel Roman instead. And he _does _feel something this time. A kind of faint resistance, like there’s something very light dangling on the end of a very long rope. He waves his hand upwards again, slightly frustrated. “Come on. What’s going on?” Another arm wave, and the third time’s the charm, apparently, because this time someone _does _rise up – although ‘rise up’ isn’t quite the right term, because it would be far more accurate to say that Remus pops out like a wad of hair being finally prised out of a shower drain. Especially considering that he’s soaked and dripping with some unidentifiable liquid. What the liquid is, Thomas doesn’t want to speculate.

Remus looks around in what appears to be genuine confusion for a second or two, before his gaze falls upon Thomas, and he practically lights up with enthusiasm. “Oh!” he says, delighted. “Now _this _is a pleasant surprise! Did you _miiiiiss me?_”

“What?” says Thomas, who hasn’t had any especially significant intrusive thoughts at all today, in complete bewilderment. “_What?_ That’s not – okay. Okay, Roman? Where are you, buddy?” He does the arm wave again, but apparently now that Remus is here, that trick isn’t working anymore. “_Roman?_”

“My brother is preoccupied!” Remus exclaims with a dazzlingly wet grin, and oh god, whatever he’s currently soaked in is also in his mouth and Thomas _really _doesn’t want to think about it. He sees Thomas doing the arm waving thing, and cocks his head to one side with a sharp _crack. _“What is _that?_ Is this a sex thing? I thought I knew all the sex things, but this is a new one on me!”

Thomas abruptly abandons the summoning attempt. He half-suspects it’s a thing that he can’t actually do, him being a Normal Flesh Being and everything. He takes a deep breath, then lets it out. _It’s only Remus_, he thinks. _Remus can’t hurt you. He’s annoying, but he can’t hurt you._ “I’m trying to get the others,” he says, forcing himself to speak reasonably and calmly. “But they’re – uh, they’re not picking up? Do you know where they are, or if they’re doing something – Roman or Virgil, or-?”

“Oh, I can probably help with _that_,” Remus says, hopping up to sit on top of Thomas’s chest-height clothes bureau. He bounces his legs, thumping them against the wood in an irregular, too-loud rhythm. “I saw our dear Mister Finding Emo _juuuust_ a few minutes ago!”

“Oh, good,” says Thomas, not sure how _good_ it really was. “Uh. Can you?” he starts, and then immediately regrets asking.

“_Virgil!_” Remus screeches, loud enough to rattle the windows, and Virgil almost instantly rises up from nowhere with a huff and a groan. He nods at Thomas in friendly, muted greeting, then sees Remus and lets out an exaggerated shudder.

“All right,” he says, “who invited _him?_” He looks around, sees Thomas in his bed, staring, and looks back at Remus, who’s now sprawled over the top of Thomas’s bureau, picking absently at a filthy-looking toenail. Remus grins and winks at him, and Virgil shudders again. “Thomas, what’s going on?”

There’s a pause where Thomas doesn’t answer, and then a look of concern falls over Virgil’s face.

“Thomas?” he says. “Is there something wrong?”

Thomas just sighs. “...Deceit, I know that’s you.”

“What? What are you talking about?” Virgil says, and shoots Thomas a ‘you’re being dumber than usual’ look. “Deceit? Why would _Deceit_ be here? It’s just me.”

“Uh huh,” says Thomas, unimpressed. “Nice try. You can switch back now.” 

“Look, if I wasn’t the real Virgil, how would you know?” Virgil looks vaguely panicked now. “I’m not doing anything wrong, I haven’t done anything out of character – have I? I _am _Virgil! I promise!”

“Well, for starters, you rose up,” Thomas says. “Virgil basically never does that. He appears out of nowhere suddenly, and scares the shit out of all of us on purpose because he likes to keep us on our toes.”

“That – that proves nothing. I can rise up if I want to. Maybe I’m trying out something new.”

“You’re also wearing the wrong hoodie.”

“...my usual one’s in the wash.”

“But, more obviously,” Thomas continues as if he had never spoken, folding his arms, “the actual Virgil is standing over by my bookshelf right now, glaring at you.”

There’s a pause.

“Oh, damn it all,” says Deceit, shaking off the Virgil disguise. The familiar yellow-and-black outfit reforms itself on him, and the scales creep up the left side of his face, wreathing it in shadow. “I really did think I had it that time. It’s always the little details,” he adds, rather sadly.

Virgil is indeed glaring at Deceit right now, pointedly and acerbically enough to kill any lesser being on the spot. “What are _you _doing here?”

Deceit just smiles, and steeples his fingers together in front of his face. “Why, Thomas called for me, of course. Why else?”

“Uh, I didn’t, though?” Thomas says. “I called for Logan. And Roman, and Patton, and Virgil. And the only one of them who actually turned up is Virgil. What’s going on, guys?”

“I’ve no idea whatsoever,” says Deceit, so smoothly and reasonably that it just _has _to be a lie.

“I’m pregnant!” Remus exclaims, grinning, which is also almost certainly a lie. “_And it’s not mine!_”

“Let me rephrase that,” says Thomas. “_Virgil. _What’s going on?”

There is a short silence.

“Okay,” says Virgil, looking uncharacteristically uncertain, “now – this is going to seem very convoluted and specific, actually.”

“Noted and appreciated,” Thomas says. “Go on.”

“You’re sick right now,” Virgil says. “And when you’re sick, your brain doesn’t really work at the same speed and quality that it usually does. A lot of your usual processes and functions are slowed down.”

“I _have _been finding it hard to concentrate,” Thomas admits.

Virgil nods. “Yeah. Turns out, when you get sick, so does everyone else.”

Thomas frowns, tries to think this through – because there’s something wrong with this whole thing, although he can’t quite place his finger on it. “I... can still use logic, though? And my emotions are fine.”

“Because ‘being sick’ obviously automatically means that they’re _dead, _not just resting,” says Deceit.

Virgil nods. “Yeah, they’re still here, they’re just... not _here_ here.”

“And you guys?” Thomas asks, already kind of knowing the answer. And already kind of dreading it.

Virgil sighs. “It’s –”

“It’s because we’re _evil!_” Remus yells loudly from Thomas’s right, where he’s still lying on top of the bureau – making Thomas jump and Virgil twitch.

“That’s not it,” he says, looking immensely uncomfortable with the situation. “Well. It’s... we’re – that’s – ”

“I don’t think you’re evil, bud,” Thomas tells Virgil.

Virgil glances over, and gives him the ghost of a smile, but doesn’t say anything.

“Ouch,” Deceit says, somewhat dryly. “Well, I’m certainly not going to pretend that didn’t hurt a bit.”

“But we _are,_” says Remus fervently. “We’re evil! We’re wicked, we’re _sinful,_ we’re fucked up through-and-through! We! Are! The! Worst!”

“Remus – ” Thomas starts, but doesn’t get to finish, because both Virgil and Deceit start talking at once, both looking genuinely enraged. And at the same time, Remus starts singing _I Can’t Decide _at the top of his lungs. Badly. Thomas didn’t know it was possible for his own voice to sound so inarguably, undeniably shitty, but Remus is managing it with flying colours. Thomas would be grudgingly impressed if his headache weren’t getting worse and worse with every second of it.

“God, why can’t you just _shut up_ – ”

“ – _FUCK AND KISS YOU BOTH AT THE SAME TIME – _”

“Remus, you are _absolutely _correct and you should _definitely _keep saying these things, because it’s _undoubtedly _going to help us all so much more in the long run – ”

Thomas endures this for maybe ten seconds – at least long enough for Remus to reach the chorus and start belting it out with gleeful enthusiasm – before he reaches the end of his tether.

“_Shut up!_” he manages to yell over all three of them, and immediately breaks out into a painful coughing fit from the exertion. And, surprisingly – as he recovers from the coughing – they actually do shut up. Remus takes a second longer to do so, but by the time Thomas manages to draw in a proper breath of air, they’re all quiet and waiting for him to speak. “We’re not... okay. Listen. We’re not going to debate how good or evil any of you are right now, as much as I’m sure you all want to. Sure, fine, you guys are the _Dark Sides, _or whatever, but that _can’t _be the reason why you’re not sick, because – because you!” He points at Deceit. “You represent my ability to lie!”

“Well, sometimes,” says Deceit.

“ – right, and – and I definitely don’t lie better when I’m sick! And I’m too tired to be anxious, so – Deceit, Virgil, why aren’t _you _sick?”

“Thomas,” says Remus, with a huge, overblown sigh. “Oh, Thomas, Thomas, _Thomas_ – we’re impossible by definition. We don’t _have _to make sense.”

Thomas looks over at Virgil. Virgil’s got a hand wrapped around the door handle, although it doesn’t look like he’s trying to open it or leave or anything – he’s just kind of absently playing with it. At Thomas’s look, he just shrugs. “Yeah – as much as I hate to say it, he’s right.”

“Or,” says Deceit, rather pointedly, staring at Virgil, “there could be another reason.”

This makes Thomas sit up and pay attention. “...another reason? What reason?” When the only response is silence, he digs his hands into his sheet covers, bunching his fists into them tightly. “_What reason? _If you need permission to tell me or anything, you’ve got it – just – what reason? Virgil?”

“It _might _be,” says Virgil, very slowly, “that we’re not sick and we’re here because – we’re the parts of you that you’re still trying to repress. And you being sick and tired means that we’re... well. Stronger, I guess?”

Thomas’s mouth falls open slightly. “That’s – what? No! _What?_ Why would I be trying to repress you, you’re – Virgil, you’re my friend!”

“And two years ago, you would have given basically anything to get rid of me,” Virgil says, and then, “and that’s not – don’t apologize for that. We’ve moved past that. It’s just, the point is –” He visibly struggles for a few seconds. “– when I told you that I used to be, you know.”

“One of them,” Thomas fills in, a bit quietly.

“Yeah. I know you said you were fine with that, afterwards, but there’s probably a part of you that... isn’t.” He groans, and rubs at his eyes so angrily that a bit of his eyeshadow actually smudges. “Actually, scratch ‘probably’, because there _is _a part, and I_ am_ that part.”

“I don’t...” He tries to collect his thoughts – tries to line them up and get them to make sense. “I don’t understand.”

“You’ve drawn this line, in your head,” says Virgil. He looks like he’s choking on the words, or that he wants to choke on the words, or something. “A line between _us _and _them,_ and it’s a neat fun little line that you’ve just shoved me right over the edge of. So. You being sick is why they’re here, and – that’s why _I’m _here.”

Thomas swallows, and just stares at him.

“That was quite succinct, all things considered,” Deceit says, raising an eyebrow. (He can do the single eyebrow raise, which is completely unfair, considering that Thomas has been trying to perfect it for _years_ now. It looks completely natural on him, too!) “Well done, Virgil.”

“Yeah, well. Logan’s not here,” says Virgil, looking grumpy. He looks away. “_Someone _has to handle the exposition.”

Thomas doesn’t want to think about this. He really doesn’t want to think about this.

Quick. Think about something else. Anything else.

Deceit lets out a tiny sigh. Thomas lets his attention wander sideways, and sees that Remus is cheerfully munching his way through a fresh stick of deodorant as quickly and enthusiastically as if it were a popsicle. And even if it were a popsicle, it would still be a pretty heinous crime – maybe even worse, because even the _thought_ of crunching on a popsicle like this is enough to make Thomas’s teeth ache in sympathy.

And in response to that thought, Remus glances over and catches Thomas’s eye before grinning a devilish smile, and then he’s no longer eating deodorant, he’s actually eating a popsicle now. And the crunching and grinding noises from his teeth sinking into the ice are horrific, even worse with Thomas’s slowly worsening headache. Thomas kind of wants to tear out his own eardrums.

“What did you need, anyway?” Virgil asks, providing a reasonable distraction. He comes to sit down on the edge of Thomas’s bed closest to the door, swinging one leg up so it’s half-coiled on top of the mattress.

Thomas slides over to the right side of the bed in order to give him room to sit down. “I was having a bit of a... crisis?”

“Existential, epistemological, ethical, or something else?” Deceit asks.

This makes Thomas pause, and he frowns, thinking for a second. “Uh, none of the above, I think? Unless – what was that second one?”

“Logic crisis, essentially.”

“Ah. No, then. Virgil, come on,” he adds, glancing over sideways. “I’m not using all these pillows, you can steal one or two if you want.”

“Sweet,” says Virgil, and steals three. He bundles them up roughly into a pseudo-nest and curls up on top of them. Remus notices Virgil on the bed and seems to make a connection, because he lights up, standing up on top of the bureau before diving bodily onto the mattress. He lands, bouncing and disrupting both Thomas and Virgil, and immediately sprawls out, taking up far too much space and sticking his feet right in Virgil’s face. Thomas makes a noise of annoyance, and unceremoniously shoves Remus off and onto the floor. He goes tumbling down with a whoop of delight, even when he hits the wall with a painful-sounding _crack._

“Crisis,” says Deceit, a bit impatiently, snapping one gloved hand pointedly. “Come on.”

“Okay, uh – so.” Thomas looks around the room nervously – Deceit with a mostly unreadable but vaguely interested expression on his face, Remus cackling to himself on the ground – and then back at Virgil, curled up on his side like a cat and giving Thomas a scrunched-up-face look. “This – are you _sure _Logan and Patton and Roman can’t come out and help?” he blurts abruptly.

“Sick of us already?” Remus says, poking his head up so just his hair and eyes are visible.

“Just sick,” Thomas says. “And not sure if I’m up to dealing with this right now.”

“_Crisis,_” Deceit insists, louder this time.

Thomas sighs. “Okay! Jeez_, _you’re pushy. All right, uh – I was looking at the comment section of some of my videos, and – ”

“Thomas, what the _hell,_” Virgil groans, tugging angrily at his hair. “You don’t read the comments! _Especially _the mean comments. It’s just such an objectively bad idea!”

“Yeah, I know, but – _wait._” Thomas freezes, and then stares at Virgil accusingly. “Hang on just a second. You’re always telling me to read the comments anyway.”

“Yeah – you’ve got to know what people are saying about you behind your back. Otherwise you won’t know what they _really _think of you.”

“But –”

“_But you still shouldn’t read them because they’ll ruin your day like they’re doing right now._”

“Oh my god,” mutters Thomas.

“Oh, you’re a walking contradiction, Virgil,” says Deceit, looking delighted. He settles himself on the windowsill that’s directly across from the end of Thomas’s bed, shuffling the curtains to one side so he can fit himself in properly at the very centre of it.

“Okay,” says Thomas, “okay. Anyway. Like Virgil said – they’ve kind of been ruining my day. Not all of them, just the – you know, the mean ones.”

“Kill them,” Remus says instantly, sitting up.

Thomas falls back onto his pillows, massaging his forehead. He sighs. “Okay, Remus – we all know that’s completely impossible. I – even if I wanted to – ”

“Doxxing someone is a lot easier than you might think,” Remus tells him, very seriously. He hops back onto the bureau, and grins, staring unnervingly at Thomas like some strange, green-spangled bird. “And then hunting them down for sport is even easier! _Man. _The deadliest game. Could be a _fascinating _video idea –”

Thomas takes a deep breath, lets it out, then proceeds to ignore him. “So, the comments. They’re bothering me – I know I shouldn’t be letting them get to me, but. Well. It honestly seems like they’ve got some valid points. Not _all _of them, but enough to make me feel...” He hesitates.

“That you’re fooling everyone, somehow,” says Deceit. “That your work isn’t as great as everyone thinks it is, and these specific few people have managed to see through it all, and that they’re the only ones that are right.”

Thomas grimaces, and nods reluctantly. “That’s it.”

“Okay, so first of all – making Thomas doubt intrinsic truths about himself is _my _job, stop stealing my territory. Second of all...” Virgil adjusts his own pillows, and tucks his arms underneath them, frowning up at the ceiling. “Didn’t we already talk about this?” he says, glancing over at Thomas. “I mean, not with –” He makes a quick gesture to the other two occupants of the room. “ – but, I’m pretty sure we had a whole thing about you and other people making comments about your job and your work.”

“Maybe?” Thomas squints at the ceiling, considering. “I don’t know – I’ve been having so many breakdowns lately, it’s hard to remember.”

“No, there definitely was,” Virgil says. “I was a puppet and we did a song and everything. I had buttons for eyes. I expressed genuine emotion and affection for Roman. It kind of really sucked.”

Thomas remembers, and grins. “Aw, yeah. That was actually pretty fun.”

“Very fun,” says Deceit. He’s frowning, looking a little sad. “It’s definitely not a shame that I wasn’t there,” he adds, “because I hadn’t been working on a puppet version of myself for that exact situation.”

Thomas has literally no idea how to react to that very unsubtle lie, and so he deals with it by clearing his throat and looking over at Virgil again. “Well – anyway, I _guess _I could go back and revisit whatever it was we did in that one? I can probably find a transcript or something, I guess, but... I don’t know. It doesn’t feel quite the same, actually?”

“That’s because it’s not,” Deceit says, somewhat cryptically, then: “You’re feeling bad?”

“When am I not, these days?”

“Experiencing cognitive dissonance?”

Thomas frowns. These don’t really need to be framed as questions, really. Deceit is Thomas – is a part of him. Anything he’s feeling or experiencing is shared between them, to some extent. “Um. I _guess?_”

Deceit just nods, looking thoughtful. “I may be able to help.”

He is immediately met with looks of extreme scepticism from both Virgil and Thomas.

“Oh, come on_,_” he says, looking honestly annoyed and a little hurt. “I don’t lie _all _the time.”

“Uh, _yeah _you do,” Virgil snaps, sitting up abruptly. “It’s literally in your job description, and also in the dictionary. Deceit, noun. Compulsive liar.”

“And of course you’re the very personification of anxiety, through and through,” says Deceit, quirking an eyebrow in Virgil’s direction. “With no other personality traits whatsoever.”

“I have anxiety, yes,” Virgil says, practically hisses. “That’s a part of who I am _and _what I do. And _you _lie. _That’s_ a part of who you are and what you do as well.”

Deceit gains a curious gleam in his eye that really doesn’t bode well. He takes a breath, and then starts to say, in a very pointed and nasty-sounding voice, “well, by that definition –”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” Thomas says, waving his hands to try to get their attention. It works, sort of. They stop talking, but they’re still glaring at each other like each one suspects the other of kicking a million puppies and then telling Patton all about it in excruciating detail. “Let’s cool it with the personal attacks, guys! That’s not going to get us anywhere.”

“Fine,” says Virgil after a second, still glaring.

“_Fine_,” says Deceit, which is again, almost certainly a lie.

Thomas sighs. “And – well, Virgil does kind of have a point, Deceit. Every time you’ve showed up so far, it’s been...” – he struggles for words for a moment – “...a trip. And not really a fun one.”

“I don’t believe this,” Deceit mutters to himself, and then he looks up and adjusts his bowler hat, eyes narrowed. “I’m only trying to help. I’ve only _ever_ been trying to help you, Thomas. I suppose that my presence here and now is an _excellent _indicator of the fact that you’re still lying to yourself about that. You – ” He gestures down at himself – the cloak and the gloves and then finally upwards, at his permanently-in-shadow right eye. “ – you really do enjoy having me play the villain, don’t you? It’s easier to have me as the bad guy, the,” he casts a glance over in Remus’s direction. “The evil one. And I won’t deny that it _is _a fun part, occasionally, but – _I want to help._” He raises his hands, splays them outwards. “This is my area, Thomas! My realm of expertise! Who better than to refute the completely untruthful ramblings of an uncouth menagerie of internet strangers than _me, _the – what was it? Ah, yes, the _compulsive liar_.”

There’s a long, long silence, and then:

“Okay,” says Thomas. “Okay – you know what? Go ahead, Deceit. I’m listening. Virgil – you fact-check,” he adds, picking up his phone and tossing it to his left.

“On it,” says Virgil, snatching it easily out of the air without even looking. He unlocks the phone with his thumb, and starts tapping at it with uncanny precision.

“All right,” says Deceit. “How much do you know about fallacies?”

“Uhhh,” goes Thomas. “I – they’re like, incorrect statements, I think? I don’t – oh! A fallacy’s a mistaken belief, especially one based on unsound arguments. Or a failure in reasoning which renders an argument invalid – you probably meant that second one.”

“Mhm. Because you _totally _didn’t read that off the first result on Google on your phone that Virgil just leaned over to show you.”

“You saw _nothing._”

“Keep telling yourself that,” Deceit says. “But, yes. Fallacies are failures in reasoning. Ways to pick an argument apart at its seams, and flawlessly destroy the incompetent moron who’s spitting the argument at you.”

“You don’t need _words _to do that,” Remus says. “Any sharp object will do. Or _any _object, really? Have you ever tried to beat someone to death with a paper napkin?”

“That’s not an intrusive thought,” Virgil says, almost accusingly. “That’s just ridiculous.”

“Oh, I’m _sorry_,” Remus says, sounding genuinely offended. “Is that not disturbing enough for you? I’m just going to have to up my game!”

“Please don’t,” Thomas begs.

“Stay tuned, the Princess Died,” Remus says, pointing at Virgil, “because the next spark of creative genius will be dedicated entirely to _you!_”

“I can honestly say that I’ve never wanted anything less in my life,” Virgil says.

“These comments of yours,” Deceit says, swooping in before their argument can pick up again. “Read some of them out for me.”

“Okay – uh,” Thomas scoots over so he’s right next to Virgil, and reaches over him and to the phone to open up the page of comments. He squints, then finds one. “ ‘Your work would be good, but you’re childish and irritating to listen to. Your optimism is grating, and –’”

“Ad hominum.”

“Sorry?”

Deceit looks calmly furious. “Ad hominum. Why are you even listening to this? They’re not providing any valid critique of anything that you’re doing. They’re attacking _you_, personally.”

Virgil tugs the phone back and starts furiously Googling something. “Does that mean that they don’t have a point?” he shoots back at Deceit.

“Wha – Virgil!” Thomas flails a bit, trying to steal the phone back. “I thought you were meant to be on my side!”

Virgil easily dodges him. “I am – you know I am! – I’m just playing devil’s advocate here!”

The lights suddenly go crazy for no apparent reason, flashing red and going pitch black in a dazzlingly bright display of wild, irregular strobing. There is also screaming, although it’s not entirely apparently _where _the screaming is coming from. This lasts for nearly fifteen whole seconds. And then it stops.

“_Why_,” says Thomas.

“Well, you mentioned the devil, and – you know me!” Remus grins and takes a low, sweeping bow. “That one was for you, Para-morose!”

“Thanks,” says Virgil dryly, fingers clenched tightly around the edges of the phonecase. “I hate it.” He looks at the screen. “...ad hominum checks out, by the way,” he adds, before passing the phone back to Thomas.

“Good to hear,” Deceit says. “Any more comments?”

“Yeah. Uh –” Flick, flick, scroll. “‘The themes in this video are scattered and unresolved, throwing too many moral dilemmas at the wall in a series that primarily has a young audience. It’s going to cause endless strife in the fandom.’”

“There’s – well, there’s no reasoning given for that premise,” Deceit says with a sigh. “Which isn’t _technically _a fallacy in itself. Some form of faulty generalization, I suppose? But the problem here lies in – you may want to be writing this down – the fact that it’s a slippery slope.”

“Slow down,” Virgil says, tugging back the phone. His fingers blur across the keyboard. “And for the record, I’m not writing this down, I’m still doing the factchecking thing.”

Thomas leans against Virgil sideways – basically using his back as a headrest, because what the hell, as long as he’s here and all that – and says, “slippery slope?”

Deceit nods. He seems to be in his element, or one of them, anyway. Thomas hadn’t been aware that a part of him was quite so enthusiastic about philosophy and ethics, but he can’t blame him. (Can’t blame himself?) He’s watched The Good Place, appreciates – well, all of it, it’s a really good show – but some of the finer points tend to go over his head a bit. Or into his head, anyway. And this is where they end up. “_Insert any hypothetical event here _is a slippery slope that leads to this, and this, and this, and eventually everything ends in tears and bloodshed and disaster.”

“_Tears and bloodshed and disaster_,” says Remus. “Title of your sex tape!”

“Oh, we’re doing _that_, now?” Virgil says. “We’re really picking at the lowest-hanging fruit it’s possible to pick at. Thomas really _must _be sick.”

“Oh, he’s sick, all right!” Remus says, and is probably about to say more, but then Virgil throws a pillow at him. Remus’s mace comes flashing down, and rips it to shreds. Feathers go everywhere.

“_Guys!_ Stop wrecking my house!” Thomas begs, and then – “...so, a slippery slope’s like a gradual snowballing of improbable reasoning?”

“Less gradual, more ‘diving straight off a cliff into the completely ridiculous’,” says Deceit. “But – yes.”

“Diving off a cliff sounds fun,” Remus says.

Virgil grabs another pillow, and is already winding up to throw it, but Thomas tugs on it, holding him back. “Please don’t sacrifice all of my pillows to my intrusive thoughts.” He goes to pull up another comment, but Virgil tugs the phone away from him abruptly. “These are getting personal.” He swats at Thomas with an elbow in order to keep him from stealing it back. “Uncomfortably personal. If we really need to practice identifying fallacies or whatever –”

“I believe it may be helpful, yes.”

“ – then could we do it in, oh, I don’t know, _any other way?_”

“But of course.” Deceit grins, swings his legs up so he’s sitting sideways on the windowsill. “Virgil, be a dear and pull up Donald Trump’s Twitter feed, won’t you?”

“I don’t know about this,” Thomas says. “I don’t tend to like getting into political stuff –”

“Trump? Oh, I hate that guy,” Remus says from the ground, sounding genuinely sulky about it.

Thomas blinks. “Huh,” he says, reconsidering some things about Remus.

“_Nope._” Virgil hits him with a pillow again. “That _definitely _isn’t where the bar is,” he says. “Hating the president is literally the bare minimum anybody can do.”

“That man’s words are _riddled _with inconsistencies,” Deceit says. “I don’t think even _he _knows what he’s trying to say, half of the time. Delicious.”

...and then they spend about half an hour picking apart all the fallacies they can find in one person’s Twitter feed. (Mainly Thomas and Deceit. Virgil helps a bit, reluctantly. Remus mainly just makes dick jokes.) And weirdly, Deceit seems to be telling the truth. About the inconsistencies, anyway. There’s enough to fill several philosophy dissertations’ worth of fallacy analysis. Loaded questions, false causes, begging the question, Texas Sharpshooter fallacies – although, for the most part, there seems to be an awful lot of ad hominum in there. Deceit, when it comes to philosophy, is merciless. He could give Joan a run for their money in the ‘wholehearted philosophy exuberance’ department. (Thomas wonders, briefly, if that’s where he got it from.) And Deceit lies a lot – not all of the time, but a _lot_ – but for the most part, he’s kind enough to make it obvious when he’s doing so. Usually through liberal amounts of sarcasm.

It’s bizarrely _fun, _actually. Well, until they get sick of reading through Trump-flavored commentary, that is.

“So, back to your Youtube comments,” says Deceit, eventually. “And how incorrect they all are.”

Thomas had nearly forgotten the point of all this, and it’s an unpleasant reminder because _dang it all, _he doesn’t want to think about his creative insecurities, not that he’s very nearly comfortable. He groans and buries his face into Virgil’s back. He feels him shift slightly, and then feels him tug the covers over both of them before shifting around so he’s facing Thomas. He grabs Thomas’s hand, squeezes it absently. His skin’s chilly against Thomas’s weirdly hot hands. Virgil is naturally colder than Thomas for some weird reason; skin just a degree or two icier. Usually it’s kind of uncomfortable, but right now it feels heavenly. Thomas just kind of basks in it for a moment or two, before raising his head up. “But what if they’re actually trying to help me?”

“Explain,” Deceit says, looking unamused and very, very skeptical.

Thomas successfully swipes the phone back from Virgil, and flicks back to the comments. “Like – here. This one, it’s – it seems reasonable.”

“They all seem reasonable,” Virgil reminds him, right into his ear.

“But even if it’s – look, it seems like constructive criticism! What’s so bad about constructive criticism, it just means that they’re trying to help me out!” He frowns. “...even if it _does _make me feel – well. Bad.”

“Just because it’s well-intentioned doesn’t make it automatically right,” says Deceit. “Remember Immanuel Kant?”

“Good _morning, _everyone!” Remus sings out, looking delighted.

“I – all right – ” Thomas points at Remus without looking at him, and gestures vaguely for a second, before jabbing his finger at him again, more definitely this time. “_No. _We’re – no.”

“We’ve definitely talked about this guy before,” Virgil says. “This is turning out to be the least original conversation we’ve ever had. Is this the only thing that we’re going to do this morning – revamp old discussion topics we’ve already covered?”

“We’re not doing a video right now, Virge,” Thomas points out, nudging Virgil gently with a foot. “And, you know, I’m sick. I’m sure it’s all right if we get a bit repetitive.”

“Repetitive?” Remus inquires.

“Yeah,” Thomas says. “That’s what I just -”

“_Repetitive?”_

“_Kant_,” Deceit says, louder this time – with the tone of voice of someone who’s just realized how out-of-control everything has become all of a sudden, and is hating every moment of it. “Can we _please _talk about Kant?”

Remus whoops and cackles. “I’d rather talk about _dick,_” he says, abandoning his brief echolalia stint as quickly as someone would abandon a broken toy, “but if you must – ”

Deceit growls and flicks a hand in Remus’s direction, and his hand immediately shoots up to cover his mouth, cutting off the rest of the sentence. This only lasts for a split second. Remus tears away the hand with a horrible ripping noise, and beams over at Deceit. “Kinky,” he says, and Deceit just groans.

“I’m in hell,” he says, squeezing the bridge of his nose with two fingers. “I am literally in hell. Life is a curse and existence is a prison, and I am trapped in the maximum-security wing with a group of ridiculous inmates who all consistently refuse to listen to a single word I say.”

“Oh, I know how you feel,” Thomas says. “Dee? Dee... ceit. I was trying out a nickname there, but, no, it just felt weird, so – never mind, just Deceit it is. Unless you want to tell me your real name?”

“Sure,” says Deceit, without missing a beat. “My name’s Thomas.”

“So that’s a no, then. Carry on, I guess.”

“With pleasure. There’s this concept called utilitarianism,” says Deceit. “And a lot of people get very angry over it, a lot of the time, but those angry arguments aside, it boils down to this – the most morally correct thing to do is the thing that makes the greatest amount of people happy.”

“How do you spell that – utilitarianism?” Virgil asks, looking up from Thomas’s phone with a frown.

“Oh, it’s simple. U – T – A – X –” Deceit starts.

“Never mind,” Virgil sighs. “I’ll figure it out myself.”

“The X is silent,” Deceit says.

“That seems like a pretty sound concept, though,” Thomas says. “I mean, why would people get angry over the idea of helping people? That doesn’t make much sense.”

“You’d think that! But Jesus did nice things, and still ended up nailed to a cross in the middle of a desert,” Remus interjects, accompanied by a loud banging and cracking noise. Thomas makes the mistake of glancing over at him, and sees the charming sight of Remus in the process of nailing himself to the bureau surface by his wrists – complete with blood and viscera and everything. He turns away quickly,

“Well, Kant, much like the Roman Empire, objected to this lovely little concept,” Deceit says. “We’ve already discussed this, but he was far more partial to the concept of deontology – judging an action not by its consequences – the moral worth of the action itself.”

“But he considered lying under any circumstances bad,” Thomas says. “Including the whole murderer-at-the-door thing.”

“That was his own personal way of judging things,” Virgil says. “It doesn’t mean it has to apply to everything when it comes to that brand of ethics.” There’s a brief silence, then he adds, looking a bit sheepish, “...I found the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. It’s... helpful.” He pauses, then adds, “okay, but Kant was a white supremacist, really fucking racist, and also, as previously established, had really bad opinions on lying and morality that basically boiled down to ‘you’re going to tell a known murderer you don’t know where your friend is? Guess you’re a bad person, forever!’ So maybe we shouldn’t be listening to him?”

“Well, I know _that,_” Deceit says. “That was – that’s kind of the exact point I was trying to make.”

Before he can expand on that, a loud _whump_ has the entire bed shaking wildly for a moment or two – indicating that Remus has dived onto the bed again. Thomas is too tired to push him off again, which means that, after getting bored of bouncing irritatingly on the foot of the bed (it takes twenty seconds, tops), Remus ends up crawling up to the headboard and attempting to wriggle his way under the blankets. This is where Thomas actually draws the line, as it turns out.

He looks over at Virgil. Virgil nods. “Stay on top of the covers,” he orders, voice warping dangerously.

Remus sticks his tongue out. “Spoilsport,” he moans, but he does so anyway – sprawling out all over the right side of the bed and taking far too much space.

“Like Virgil said,” Deceit says. “Kant’s morals were, somewhat ironically, idealistically skewed. And deontology is clearly broken, philosophically speaking. But utilitarianism barely makes any more sense.”

“It seems all right to me, though?” Thomas says.

“Well, yes, but –” Deceit spreads his hands theatrically in front of him. “Imagine that you have a bunch of people who derive pleasure solely from brutally torturing and murdering young children.”

“Do I _have _to?” Thomas complains, wincing.

“Yes,” says Deceit.

“_Excellent,_” says Remus, who had instantly brightened up and started paying attention at the word ‘torture’. “Now you’re speaking my language, Memphis May Liar!”

“So,” continues Deceit, “assume that this group is large – very large, say around a hundred people or so. And now imagine that there is a young child whom nobody particularly cares, or even knows about. An orphan, perhaps – but the point is that they’re just the sort of child who nobody’s life is affected by, positively or negatively, in any way.”

“I don’t like where this is going,” says Virgil.

“Under utilitarianism, a morally correct action is the one that brings the greatest amount of pleasure for the greatest number of people,” Deceit says. “This group of sadistic people will be very happy indeed if you give them this child to them to do with as they wish. The child will, obviously, be pretty unhappy about this situation, but they’re only one person. And nobody else will be affected negatively, so the benefits greatly outweigh the overall harm caused, morally speaking.” He shrugs. “So, under utilitarianism – obviously, letting them have the kid is the right thing to do.”

“That’s... a really extreme circumstance, though,” Thomas says, after taking a moment to process this.

“Extreme circumstances are only extreme because they’re the logical conclusion of a string of smaller, less extreme events,” says Deceit. “If everybody acted in accordance to utilitarianism all the time, circumstances like _that _are what we’d end up with.”

There’s a pause.

“_Actually_,” says Thomas, somewhat triumphantly, “that is a slippery slope argument, and it’s a _fallacy._”

Virgil laughs, and Deceit’s eyes widen, and he says, “I appear to have taught you entirely too well. Damn it all. Very well, back to the initial –”

“Hey,” says Virgil. “It says here that there’s another main moral philosophy theory – and you haven’t mentioned it yet.”

“Does it, now?” Deceit says evasively.

“Yes. Virtue ethics. What’s _that _about?”

“Ah,” says Deceit, making a face. “Well, yes. That.”

“Virtue ethics,” Thomas says, tasting it on his tongue.

Deceit nods, reluctantly. “It’s like a... mmm, well. I hesitate to say ‘happy medium between the two others’, because there’s things about it that I object to on principle. But it all essentially boils down to asking the question ‘what would a virtuous person do in this situation?’, and acting in accordance to however you answer that.”

“A virtuous person? Like Jesus?” Remus asks from Thomas’s right, a seemingly innocent suggestion.

Virgil, on his left, wriggles around a bit before wrapping himself around Thomas almost protectively. He glares over at Remus. “Your strange obsession with bringing up Jesus Christ, Son of God, at every opportunity is made a whole lot more disturbing by the fact that I know you have way more explicit art of you and him in sexually compromising poses than any sane person would ever need. Which is to say, _any._”

“Um. Ew,” says Thomas.

“I can draw you in too, you know,” Remus says. “The eternal Jesus orgy is always accepting new applicants. Also, I do commissions!”

“Disturbing connotations aside,” says Deceit, seemingly resigned to his role as peacekeeper and person-who-steers-the-conversation-back-on-track, “Jesus as a legendary figure is an excellent example. Asking yourself _what would Jesus do _and following along with whatever you come up with is basically how virtue ethics works.”

“Or,” says Virgil, “think to yourself, _what would Remus do, _and always do the exact opposite.”

“That hurts a _bit_, but you’re not wrong!” Remus says, bouncing happily.

“Well, that actually sounds great as a moral code,” Thomas admits, trying to get Remus to stop shaking the bed so much without actually touching him. “I’m going to look it up some more later, actually, but – it also sounds like exactly the sort of thing you’d be violently opposed to.”

“It’s not a very good way to live your life,” Deceit says. “But if we apply it these disagreeable comments of yours...”

“What do you mean?”

“Well,” says Deceit. “Would a virtuous person try to give someone unsolicited advice on their creative work in a way that quite obviously would harm and trouble the person receiving it?”

“...uh, no,” says Thomas.

“There you go, then.”

There’s a pause.

“That seems like an overly-simple way to resolve this horrifying moral dilemma we’ve been debating for the last hour,” Virgil says.

Deceit sighs. “So I’m tired of doing this. Sue me.”

“I mean, fair enough,” murmurs Thomas, and retreats into deep thought for a few minutes. Very deep thought, while also poking Remus back from entering too much of Thomas’s personal space, which happens every couple of seconds on average. And then there’s a soft noise and a careful shifting of weight at the very foot of the bed. Thomas stops trying to get Remus to remove his bony elbow from right under where Thomas’s neck is resting for a second, and looks up to see that Deceit is now seated on the end of his bed, cross-legged.

It’s agreeably quiet for a few seconds, and then Remus starts filling in the silence with off-key, grating humming, so Thomas decides to speak up.

“All this philosophy stuff – I had no idea that I knew all of this,” he says. Remus continues humming, but it’s more muted now that there’s someone talking over him, and not quite as grating.

“Yeah – Logan gets most of your obscure bits and facts, but we all know a lot about everything,” Virgil says, and then, “we also all have our weird niches. I think Roman actually knows every song from Gilbert and Sullivan operetta in existence?”

“Huh. So, do you have favorites for stuff?” he wonders. “Like – I don’t really have any _favorite _philosophers, because I don’t know many at all – apart from the racist ones you guys seem to keep bringing up at every opportunity, I mean –”

“I’m partial to Thomas Hobbes’s grander ideas, if not the specifics,” Deceit says, looking genuinely pleased at the question. “The Leviathan’s wordy, but interesting once you get past all of the sesquipedalian nonsense.”

“I have no idea who that is, but that seems valid,” Thomas says, and pokes at Virgil. “Verge? Any favorites?”

“Does Gerard Way count?” Virgil asks.

Thomas laughs, and Deceit just sighs.

“I despair, I really do,” he says.

“Fine,” says Virgil. “Nietzsche, then.”

“Okay, edgelord,” says Remus, and waggles his eyebrows. “Nihilism is a good look on you.”

“Edgelord? _Look who’s talking –_”

“You are absolutely not a Nietzscheist,” Deceit says with absolute conviction and more than a little bit of professional outrage. “He’s commonly associated with nihilism, but Nietzsche was violently opposed to the entire _concept _of it –”

Virgil makes a filthy gesture towards Deceit (which Remus immediately starts mirroring in absolute delight). “Did I ask for a lecture?”

“Yes,” says Deceit.

Virgil does the gesture again, more emphatically. “_I did not. _The only person I want a lecture on – well, _any _abstract concept, actually! – from is Logan. Logan’s not here. Shut up forever, thanks.”

“As you wish,” says Deceit, miming a lips-zipper. Virgil huffs again and then settles, fingers curling lightly around Thomas’s shoulders.

Thomas looks over to his other side, and, already aware that he’s going to regret asking, says, “so, Remus –”

“Diogenes,” says Remus instantly – without the slightest bit of hesitation.

“I never would have guessed,” Deceit says dryly.

Thomas frowns. “Wait, Diogenes is the one who –”

“Masturbated in public, lived naked in a tub in the middle of a marketplace, and died from eating bad sushi? _Correct!_”

Thomas sighs. “I was going to say ‘the one who did the _behold, a man_ thing’, but... yeah. That works too, I guess.”

“We should try that sometime!” Remus says brightly.

“What, plucking a chicken naked, storming into a school, and presenting it to a famous philosopher to prove a point?” Virgil says. “I’d rather not, thanks.”

“I actually meant masturbating in public, but that sounds great too!”

“No to both,” Thomas tells them firmly.

“He did have the right idea regarding anarchism as applied to philosophy,” Deceit says, and then catches Virgil’s murderous glare, and backtracks. “...which was not a thing that I was planning on talking about for any extended length of time.”

They fall into a comfortable-enough silence for a few minutes. Thomas feels his eyes drooping closed, and forces them open, because – it’s only morning, after all, and also it would feel weirdly rude to fall asleep with other people in the room. Even though they’d probably all be fine with it. Considering their states of being and everything. Still weird and rude.

Almost like he can tell what he’s thinking – (oh, wait – right, nevermind) - Virgil bumps Thomas’s shoulder gently with his own, and then leans over to hook his phone back up to the charging cable. “You should probably get some rest,” he says, and brushes Thomas’s hair up his forehead with an unnaturally cold hand. “ – you’re really sick, Thomas.”

“It’s not that bad,” Thomas says, because – it’s not. He _could _work. If he wanted to. He’s just being lazy. That’s all it is.

“Uh huh,” says Virgil, apparently unconvinced.

“Seriously, Virgil, I’m _fine._”

“Of course you are,” says Deceit encouragingly from the windowsill.

They both turn to glare at him, and then Virgil says, “seriously, dude. Why do you think he even showed up in the first place?”

“...oh.”

“Yeah. _Oh._ Listen, I’ll come and badger you incessantly about staying properly hydrated in like an hour,” Virgil says. He leans over and checks the phone charging cord again. “So get some sleep before that happens.”

Thomas sighs, and gives in. “Fine. I’ll try.”

Virgil smiles – a shade or two brighter than his usual smirk – and shifts Thomas over to the side with a nudge – Thomas rolls over obligingly – so he can wriggle his way out from under the covers, relinquishing both his hold on Thomas and his small hoard of pillows.

“All right,” he says. “Time for me to go so you can maybe rest.” Virgil does his little two-fingered salute thing, throws his last stolen pillow in Deceit’s direction in one last act of petty vengeance – Deceit catches it easily, and just smirks at him – before rolling cleanly off the bed with a laid-back, “Virgil out.” He disappears over the side, and there’s no _thump_ to indicate that he’s hit the ground, which means that he’s gone for the time being. Remus has slunk away at some point – Thomas doesn’t think too hard about _when _or _why _because that’s an excellent way to get him to come whirling back with a vengeance – leaving just him and Deceit in his bedroom.

Weirdly, Thomas isn’t as concerned about being alone with him as he would have thought he’d be. Deceit isn’t exactly a malicious presence right now. He’s just there – quiet, kind of unassuming. He’s even removed his trademark bowler hat, making him look less alien that he usually does. Thomas looks at him curiously, but Deceit just gives him a quiet smile. Thomas hesitates, but then settles back under the covers, trying to get comfortable. 

“I have a question,” he says.

“It’s not like I can stop you from asking,” says Deceit.

Thomas turns sideways, looks at the bureau where Remus had been sitting previously. There are suspicious stains on it. He’s going to have to deal with that later. “All these things you taught me. They’re things that I can actively use to... well, combat you. For lack of a better term.”

“Technically not a question,” Deceit points out, although he looks like he knows what’s coming next.

“So why are you doing it? Why help me like this?”

“No reason.”

Thomas shifts, curling his legs up under him. “You know, for the literal embodiment of my deception, you can be a _really_ lousy liar sometimes.”

“Glass houses, Thomas,” says Deceit – softly, evenly. There’s a bit of a smile to his voice. He slides off the edge of the bed, stands up. “I’m only as convincing as you are.”

Thomas watches Deceit, a pillow under one arm, pad silently around the side of his bed – silently? Is he not wearing any shoes? Wait, _is Deceit wearing socks? _Why is that weirdly adorable? – and over to his bedside table. He picks up Thomas’s phone and idly toys with it for a moment before unplugging it.

“Hey,” says Thomas vaguely.

“Whoops,” says Deceit, rather unapologetically, and then – at Thomas’s disapproving look – plugs it back in again. He weighs the pillow he’s carrying, and then decisively fluffs it with two sharp flicks of his wrist. “Sit up.”

Thomas moans and grumbles and complains, but he sits up nonetheless. His head is pounding. He’s fine. Deceit tucks the new pillow under his head, rearranges a few of the others so they’re a bit straighter, insert obligatory this-could-be-gayer joke here, and pokes Thomas to lie back down.

“You’re a real mom sometimes, you know that,” Thomas says.

Deceit raises an eyebrow, and pulls the covers up to Thomas’s chin, the action precise and almost pointed in its efficiency. “How very dare you,” he says primly and turns around. He leaves the room, but only briefly, and when he comes back, he has a glass of water that he sets ever-so-carefully next to Thomas’s still-charging phone. “If you don’t drink water, you’re going to die,” he says. The way he says it makes it sound like a challenge.

Thomas thinks. Or tries to. It’s hard, at this point – everything’s kind of fuzzy. “Slippery slope, again?”

“Hm. You know, that would be correct, but – it wasn’t actually a fallacy this time.”

“Sounded like one.”

“And what would make you say that?” A fleeting grin. “If you don’t drink water, you _are _going to die. Eventually. It’s basic biology.”

“Mm, yeah. What were we talking about, again?” Thomas asks, letting Deceit fuss quietly over him.

“Nothing important whatsoever,” Deceit murmurs.

“No, we were – it was – _yeah. _Why are you giving me... stuff. Stuff that helps me stop doing the, the whole – lying thing?”

“I don’t know,” says Deceit. “You tell me.”

Thomas frowns. “You’re... either telling lies and making them sound like truths, or telling truths and making them sound like lies. Or lecturing me on philosophy and ethics.”

Deceit goes and pulls the curtains over the window – shrouding the room in soft darkness, tinged golden at the edges. “Well. It _is_ my job.”

“What bit?”

“Yes.”

Thomas sort of sighs and sort of laughs except he’s too tired to properly commit to either so it just comes out as an exhausted sort of cough.

“Comfortable?” Deceit asks, coming back over to Thomas’s bedside.

“Yeah. Thanks.”

“Then I’ll be taking my leave,” he says, and brushes a hand lightly over Thomas’s hair. It’s a strangely intimate gesture that doesn’t actually feel as weird as it really should.

“See you later, Deceit,” Thomas says, with the hint of a smile.

“I dread the very thought,” Deceit replies, mirroring the smirk. “Goodnight, Thomas.”

“It’s morning.”

“Lies,” Deceit says, already sinking away. “Abject lies.”

And then he’s gone, and it’s just Thomas and an empty room and the feeling that he’s missed some crucially important detail that would make everything make sense. The room is dark and calm. The blankets are soft and warm.

Thomas sighs, decides to worry about it tomorrow – and closes his eyes.

Sleep comes quickly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> fuck kant. we stan diogenes only. this has been a PSA from Min. 
> 
> technically, i committed the straw man fallacy a whole bunch of times here because i constructed arguments that were very easy for me, the writer, to shoot down, but i’m going to ignore that. I will also ignore the fact that Dee didn’t bring up the fallacy fallacy because that will probably lead to me having an aneurysm from problems that I’ve created.
> 
> i've realized just now that a lot of this is just pretentious bullshit. sorry about that. i'll get back to more action-based stuff next time.
> 
> okay now it’s time to actually study philosophy because otherwise i’m gonna die.
> 
> oh! also, quick thing – **i’m closing prompts** because as it turns out i get overwhelmed.. very quickly. whoa. so if you send any more in I Will Not Do Them (Sorry). i’ll probably get around to those few prompts that are left eventually but also i have some thoughts and ideas of my own i want to explore! stay tuned for that. eventually. i signed up to a few fic exchanges this holiday season, so i’ve got to fulfil my assignments there first, but i will be back! with more me-brand nonsense. i have a lot of nonsense to share!
> 
> comments? thoughts? complaints? throw ‘em at me. i’d love to hear them.


	4. Deceit Presents: Philosophy Without Limits

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “WHY ARE YOU SUCH A TOTALLY AND IRREFUTABLY TERRIBLE PERSON IN EVERY POSSIBLE WAY,” Patton wails, covered head-to-toe in imaginary blood.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written/posted before the SvS part two episode drops, so any conflicts with future canon are due to that (if you’re reading this later on). 
> 
> **Warnings:** Imaginary gore. Imaginary murder. Ethical conundrums. Remus and his extensive collection of dick jokes and murders. You know, the usual.

They’re back at the topic of the wedding again. Because of course they are. It’s one thing to claim that the discussion and debate are over and that a decision has been finally, conclusively, overwhelmingly reached (with a verdict and sentence given by a completely legitimate and obviously certified judge who is definitely not the literal personification of Thomas’s hopes and dreams given a robe and a gavel, oh no) – and quite another to actually accept that decision, internally speaking.

It’s a _big decision_. Yes, of course going to the wedding is the right thing to do and he’s got to support his friends, and insert the entire forty-four-minute video debate here because oh _boy _was that an entire thing – but it’s not like he can stop thinking and overthinking it. Because, man oh man, Thomas really does want to go to that callback.

So, with all that in mind, it’s probably not surprising that he and Virgil and Patton are currently sitting out on the back porch on a pleasant Wednesday afternoon, having yet another detailed panicked discussion that’s one of many he’d never dream of capturing on camera. Mainly because there have been so many_. _Like, _so many _it’s unbelievable. (Although that’s just kind of what internal debates-slash-monologues are like.) And filming and posting each and every one of them would be more than tedious, because it’s just, like – the same five points rehashed over and over again, which does _not _make for good video content.

Virgil has already pitched the usual ‘but what if we miss some vitally important part of our life by missing the callback’, and Patton has delivered his equally expected ‘but it’s the _right thing to do_’, and they’re probably about to proceed to the part where both of them switch around their opinions a bit in a hurried, confusing blur. They both look about as exhausted as Thomas feels. It no longer feels like a real debate – more like they’re just going through the motions.

Thomas kind of really wants to scream.

He already knows this is the sort of debate it’s going to be impossible for him to resolve internally – knows it with a deep, resigned kind of certainty. It really would be nice if someone else could come along and just. Take the decision out of his hands once and for all. Who thought that giving him any kind of control over his own life was a good idea? He’s a living disaster.

“I’m getting a headache,” Patton says miserably – deviating from the script briefly, and nobody complains or comments about this. And drags his knees up to his chest, resting his knees on top of them. “My brain feels like... like a very small piece of industrial machinery.”

“Uh, you’ve lost me,” says Thomas, running a hand through his hair.

“My mind’s a little saw,” he says, shooting unenthusiastic double-finger guns at nobody in familiar.

“_Badum-tss_,” Virgil says, obligingly pounding his hands twice against the paving of the porch, and doing jazz hands, because apparently they’re too tired for actual mental sound effects.

Patton waves a hand in weary acknowledgement. “I will be here all week,” he declares to the back yard. “Tip your waiters, etcetera, etcetera.”

“Probably all month,” says Virgil. “At the rate that we’re going, anyway.”

“Sorry, guys,” Thomas says, and wonders if he should go inside and get a drink to add some flavour and style to his approaching mental breakdown. Maybe with a fancy straw and lemon on the side or something. “I just... I can’t stop thinking about this. Even though I know I should be done with it, and Roman already _made _his decision, and – _ugh. _Why do I have to be like this? No offense, guys.”

“Hey, you should definitely go get that drink, though,” says Patton, slightly more enthusiastically than before – sitting up just that little bit straighter. “With a bendy straw!”

Virgil nudges him. Pointedly.

“Whoops – right! And it’s okay to have thoughts and overthink things sometimes, and I totally get it about the whole not-wanting-to-do-this thing, kiddo, don’t worry.” A sheepish grin. “I just got distracted by the really cool idea of a really cool drink. Dang, it’s hot out.”

“Yep,” says Virgil, sighing. “To both. Honestly, if anyone should be apologizing for anything, it’s me – I’m the one who’s _responsible _for overthinking so much.”

“Nope,” says Thomas, standing up. “We’re not doing that. If we start going _there, _we’re going to end up in an endless loop of blaming ourselves for everything, which will add _another _layer of shittiness to this entire conversation, and I’m going to eventually end up in bed tonight three hours ahead of schedule, eating an entire tub of ice cream and mindlessly watching episodes of the Office I’ve already watched a million times over. _Again._ Let’s go get drinks, and talk about something _else _for a bit.”

“Good idea,” says Patton, also springing up. “Ooh! Actually, there’s this new movie I was thinking we could go to see –”

Virgil’s up too, trailing behind them, and Thomas’s hand is on the handle to the screen door, about to open it –

“_Or. _You could all listen to me for once,” says a familiar voice with a very distinctive cadence from just behind them. “I’ve heard it’s excellent fun and great for your long-term mental health.”

The reactions are instantaneous. Virgil lets out a loud, startled hiss and grabs Thomas by the arm, fingers gripping so tight it’s painful. Patton _screeches _and falls off sideways into the porch into the bushes with a _crunch _and a lot of rustling.

“_Deceit!_” Thomas yells, throwing up his free arm to point accusingly at his most misleading of Sides, who’s lounging on the porch in a sort of _draw me like one of your French girls _kind of pose, with a devious grin on his face and his trademark bowler hat at a jaunty angle. Thomas pauses, frowns, and squints. “Wait, Deceit?”

“Surprised to see me?” Deceit says, and _winks._ Downright flirtatiously, actually.

What?

_What?_

“I’m...” Thomas struggles for words for a moment. “I’m surprised that you just. Just showed up, actually! Without impersonating anyone, I mean.”

“Oh, _come now,_” says Deceit, flapping a hand carelessly though the air. “I don’t _always _have to impersonate someone else whenever I show up, you know!”

“Uh, historically speaking, you have never _not _done that,” says Virgil. “What the hell is this?”

Patton pops up from the edge of the porch, shaking leaves out of his hair, and also points accusingly at Deceit. “Hey! Get out of here, you – you – ”

“Vile boa cons-_trick_-stor?” Deceit suggests helpfully.

“Yes! That!” Patton scrambles up onto the porch and onto his feet, brushing dirt and shrubbery off the fabric of his hoodie. “We’re done with this conversation, anyway! – we don’t need your input for this! Or – or, ever. Leave Thomas alone!”

“See, I’d _love _to do that,” Deceit says, rolling over onto his stomach and propping his chin up on both his hands. “I really would. But unfortunately, I suffer from this funny little affliction called _being a part of him._ So unless he’s willing to put himself up for a personality transplant or, you know, a lobotomy...”

Thomas blinks, and then looks over at Patton and Virgil. “Okay, is it just me, or are you guys getting really weird vibes from this?”

“I get weird vibes from every situation,” Virgil says, still clinging to Thomas’s arm. “I’m really not the person you should be asking.”

“Let’s just go inside,” says Patton, squeezing behind Thomas to slide open the back door. “Let’s get that drink and just... just ignore him.”

“Good idea,” says Thomas, tugging Virgil to follow.

“You seem to have forgotten about my incredible Deceit-specific power of _walking through doors,_” Deceit calls from behind them. “And also walls. Walls aren’t a problem, either. I’m basically a brain ghost.”

“Okay, _seriously, _what is wrong with you?” Virgil says, spinning around – sounding simultaneously bewildered and angry.

Deceit opens his mouth with a half-smirk, clearly about to respond to that, but before he can, there’s a swell of piano music from out of nowhere, and Roman rises up from the other side of the porch, beaming. “You called?” he says.

There’s a beat.

“No,” says Virgil. “No-one did.”

“Not that we aren’t pleased to see you-!” Patton says hastily.

“Hi, Roman – welcome to the party, I guess?” Thomas runs a hand through his hair, trying to work out what’s going on, because absolutely nothing makes sense any more. Even more so than it usually doesn’t make sense. “If you have any idea about what’s up with Deceit today, let me know. Because I am _completely _lost.”

“Wait, Deceit?” says Roman, looking startled.

Deceit waves at Roman brightly from where he’s still sprawled out on the ground. “Hey there, Prince Alarming! It’s _so_ good of you to join us!”

Roman looks at where Deceit’s lying on the porch for a long, long moment, and goes on a remarkably intricate and lengthy facial journey that’s actually fascinating to watch. It also makes next to no sense – even more so when he finally speaks.

“How dare you,” he says, very very softly.

“Oh, cool,” says Thomas. “Now I’m even more lost. Did something happen, guys?”

Patton shrugs, looking equally bewildered, and Virgil says, “Not that I know of?”

“You are making a mockery of me,” says Roman angrily. “Being taken seriously is enough of a chore as it is – ”

“But you make it _so _easy,” says Deceit with a simpering grin. “You should try loosening up a bit, _Princey._”

“Your position on the ground right now is _also _making it easy,” Roman says. “Easy for me to kick you back into the dark corner of the mind from which you came from. This was an _excellent _idea. I’m _enjoying_ this.”

“Hang on,” says Thomas, realization dawning. He looks from Deceit to Roman and back to Deceit, going on what’s probably a very fascinating facial journey of his own. “No. Wait,” he says, and stares at Roman incredulously. “_Deceit?_”

Roman scowls, and lets out a noise of ungodly frustration. “I don’t know why I bother anymore,” he says, and shrugs off the disguise. The smooth half of his face melts away into scales and shadow, and the red and white of Roman’s costume slides off like a shed skin, revealing a dark button-up shirt. No cape, and no hat, though.

“Okay, _what,_” says Virgil.

“Wait,” says Patton. “But, if _that’s _Deceit, then – ”

Everybody looks over at the Deceit that’s lounging on the ground like he’s in a strip club, waiting to get stepped on. He cackles and flips them all off, and in retrospect, they probably should have figured it out by this point.

Thomas groans, and buries his head in his hands. “Hi, Remus,” he says, half-muffled.

“You have got to be kidding me,” Virgil says.

“This was _absolutely _part of the plan, in case you were wondering,” says the real Deceit, through gritted teeth. “And I definitely remembered, while putting it all together, to factor in _how much of a chaotic moron Roman’s brother is._”

Remus laughs again, and just straight up reaches up and tears off Deceit’s face – flesh and skin and everything, and then he shakes his head and his regular face is there – moustache and eyeshadow and streak of grey hair and everything. Another shake, and his usual costume is back – although the cape and the hat still remain over all of it. “No rhyme or reason, Deedeedeedeedee!” He kicks his legs up and backflips over before rolling onto his feet with an energetic bounce. He sweeps a bow in the direction of Thomas. “That was pretty fun! I really should try impersonating you nerds more often – I get a _much _better reception when I do, it looks like.”

“_Did you steal my fucking clothes,_” Deceit roars.

Thomas sidles back towards the back door, hoping to sneak away into the kitchen under cover of the chaos of what looks to be a rapidly ensuing extremely violent fight. Patton and Virgil both seem to be very onboard with this – three cheers for Repression Squad, Thomas supposes. Patton reaches for the handle, but –

“NOT SO FAST.”

Patton’s hand clasps over his mouth abruptly, wrenching it back from the door, and Thomas looks back to see Deceit making That Hand Gesture in his direction, and readjusting his usual hat – which he appears to have reclaimed from Remus, along with his cape, although it appears somewhat the worse for wear from the whole experience. Patton says something muffled that sounds an awful lot like ‘but I didn’t say anything!’

“That seems like a misuse of your powers,” Thomas says. “Aren’t you only supposed to be able to shut people up with that?”

“Only on Wednesdays and every second Friday of the month.”

“Sure.”

“What do you two even want?” Virgil growls, crossing his arms. “What was the plan – you show up in disguise as Roman, and then Remus as Deceit pops up to stop us getting suspicious over if he’s the real deal or not?”

“That’s completely ridiculous and I have no idea what you’re talking about,” says Deceit smoothly.

Patton tears his hand away from his mouth. “So what do you _want?_”

“We want in on the wedding debate!” Remus says bluntly and cheerfully.

Deceit apparently does not appreciate this cavalier reveal of what was most likely a carefully constructed and incredibly subtle plan, judging by the strangled hiss that he lets out. “Thank you, Remus! Your contributions here are very much appreciated!”

“You already got in on the wedding debate,” says Thomas, choosing to look at Deceit directly, and hoping that if he ignores Remus hard enough he’ll just forget that he exists, and then maybe Remus himself will also forget about that too. “Remember? It was, uh –”

“The whole courtroom thing,” says Virgil. “I was on jury duty. I _hate _jury duty. You have to make decisions that have an _impact on society as a whole._ It’s so much pressure and it _sucks_.”

“I know, buddy,” says Thomas sympathetically, patting him on the back. “You tell me every time the possibility of me serving jury duty even slightly passes through my mind. Which is... weirdly often, come to think of it.”

“Well, ‘_the whole courtroom thing’, _as you put it, doesn’t seem to have helped much,” says Deceit, tucking his arms neatly behind his back. “Seeing as you’re still debating with yourself about it weeks later.”

“So what if I am?” says Thomas defensively. “I overthink things a lot. You know that. We _all _know that. The entire _internet _knows that, and Tumblr never shuts up about it.”

“I thought that perhaps you could benefit from... an alternate perspective. Seeing a different side of things, so to speak.” Deceit inclines his head, grins. The sunlight glints off the scaled side of his face, giving him a strangely otherworldly glow. “If you’re willing to hear it.”

“...Am I allowed to say no to this?”

“Absolutely not,” Deceit says brightly.

“Oh,” says Thomas, already resigned to getting dragged around on another traumatic inner journey by extensions of himself for the next hour-or so. “Okay. Cool.”

“And... Remus?” Virgil says. “What’s he doing here?”

“Remus is here for moral support,” says Deceit.

“Uh, I think you’ll find that _moral support _is _my_ job!” Patton says. “And unless you have a secret Dark Morality tucked away there somewhere, you ain’t stealing it from me anytime soon, mister!”

“_Fine,_” says Deceit. “Remus is here for _creative _support, then. Now, if we’re quite finished arguing over semantics, can we please get on with things?”

“Things? What things?” says Thomas, alarmed.

“Oh,” says Deceit, apparently more cheerful now that things are going more according to plan, “_you know. _Just _things._”

“Actually, I don’t think any of this is actually all that necessary?” Patton babbles, frantically waving his hands as if the act of doing so might actually end up stopping what’s about to occur. “How about we all just go inside and get a nice cool drink and some lunch and just forget about whatever the heck this is! You two can come too – I’m pretty sure Thomas has some apple juice that’s way past its expiry date in the cupboard, Remus, doesn’t that sound nice?”

Deceit blithely ignores this, and just gestures at Remus with a dramatic little flick of his hand. “Remus, take us away,” he orders.

Remus actually _salutes, _and clears his throat, like he’s about to start singing.

“What is this. What is going on,” Virgil says, voice slowly sliding into ‘nightmare death growl’ territory.

“**_I LIKE TRAINS_**,” Remus screeches at the top of his lungs.

“Wha –”

There is an incredibly loud rushing noise, and then they’re gone.

*

Thomas blinks and now he’s on a vehicle that’s moving at approximately entire-too-fast-for-his-liking miles per hour. He stumbles, and grabs onto one of the railings at his side for support – and sees, as he does, Virgil and Patton doing much the same.

“Okay, number one, that was an _incredibly _outdated reference that isn’t even close to being funny anymore,” Virgil yells over the sound of clattering wheels and rushing wind. “And second of all, this isn’t even a train! This is one of those – fuck, those – the British train things!”

“The word you are looking for,” says Deceit, who is perched delicately on one side the front of the train, apparently entirely unbothered by the speed they’re going at, “is _trolley._” He’s switched out his normal hat for a flat-brimmed cap in his usual black and yellow, and he’s now wearing a waistcoat. A golden watch chain dangles from one pocket. He adjusts his gloves with an elegant flick of his wrists.

...Thomas deeply suspects that his capacity for deception is far more enthusiastic about cosplay than he had previously assumed.

They’re in the very front section of an old-fashioned trolley that seems to have been painted rainbow. (Good. At least Remus or Deceit or whoever designed this thing has _some _sense of style.) There’s no glass in the windows – they’re all open, giving a clear view of the seemingly endless trolley tracks stretching out ahead, and the nondescript suburban landscape blurring all around them.

Remus is there too, of course. He’s crouched, gremlin-like in the only seat, right at the front. And he’s driving, or steering or something – it’s not like a wheel is actually necessary, because – well, there’s only one set of tracks – but Thomas isn’t too sure how a trolley actually _works _so the details appear kind of fuzzy to him. In any case, he certainly seems to be in control of the trolley. Which seems like a really terrible idea in more ways than one.

“Welcome onboard, Thomas,” says Deceit, and pulls twice on a little cord hanging from the roof of the trolley. A charming little bell noise rings out – _ding-ding._ “And welcome back to the inside of your lovely head, etcetera, etcetera – ”

“I will be _honest,_” says Patton, gripping the side of the trolley nervously as it lets out a particularly dangerous-sounding rattle. “This doesn’t seem very safe at all. Are you sure this thing is OSHA-compliant?”

“In every conceivable way,” Deceit assures him. “We spent hours double- and triple-checking every part of its construction and functionality to make sure that absolutely nothing can go wrong today.”

“Oh, good,” says Patton, relieved, apparently forgetting who he’s talking to.

“That’s a lie!” Remus howls delightedly from the driver’s seat. “We threw this together in fifteen minutes flat during a super boring dinner with Thomas’s parents last week. The only thing OSHA-compliant in this ramshackle chaos vehicle is _this dick!_”

“Oh, god,” says Patton.

“Your penis adheres to Occupational Safety and Health Administration standards?” Virgil says incredulously.

“Yes, Virgil,” says Remus with the air of someone pointing out the blatantly obvious. “Sexual health and safety is _very_ important.”

“Well,” says Thomas optimistically. “This is all completely imaginary and I’m probably standing on my back porch right now with my eyes closed, talking to myself like a lunatic. So I’m sure that even if this equally imaginary trolley derails and crashes and burns, I’ll be fine.”

“Actually,” says Deceit. “If you die in the dream, you die in real life.”

“...That’s probably a lie, but also, I’m now extremely terrified and would like to get off.” Thomas starts looking around for an exit sign. Predictably, there are none. “How do you stop this thing?”

“You don’t!” says Remus, holding up a handful of horrifyingly mangled mechanical parts. “I tore out the braking mechanism half an hour ago!”

“What is _wrong _with you?” Patton shrieks.

“Tragic backstory time?” says Remus eagerly. “Well, if you insist! It all started when the person who I was got torn messily and painfully in half at a _sinfully_ young age to make two separate beings that we’re all referring to as me and my brother –”

“As fascinating as that probably is,” Virgil says loudly, “right now we’re in non-canonical territory, and it probably doesn’t even apply. Can we _please _just stick to whatever Deceit has planned so we can get it over with, and then try to immediately forget about all of it somewhere less...” He struggles with words for a moment. “...less high-velocity?”

“A wonderful plan,” says Deceit. “So, if I may speak...?”

“Fine,” says Patton unhappily.

“Just get on with it,” Virgil snaps.

Thomas has a sneaking suspicion that he knows exactly what this entire situation entails, but he can’t quite place his finger on it. Instead of voicing this aloud, he just nods.

“So,” Deceit says. “I’ve been thinking, recently. What’s the point of trying to explain complicated concepts to Thomas in simplified, verbal terms, when there’s a whole _universe _of possibilities for interactive learning right inside his head? The courtroom scene was only the beginning! Why, if all philosophy classes could be taught in this way, the academic world could be entirely revolutionized!”

“_This is philosophy class?_” says Virgil incredulously.

“Oh, it’s far more than that!” Deceit exclaims gleefully. “This, fellow Sides and _esteemed _Thomases, is the trolley problem!”

“Oh, trolley problems?” Patton says. “If _that’s _what you’re going for, then you should’ve brought Logan along instead. I’m terrible at numbers! Me being here is a huge math-stake.”

“Badum-tss,” says Virgil hurriedly. “Also, I’m pretty sure he means the ethical problem. Not like a ‘train A and train B are travelling at whatever speed’ problem.”

“This is the one with murder, isn’t it,” says Thomas, already exhausted.

“Sure is!” Remus chirps like a frenzied cuckoo. “Would you expect anything less of me? Of _us?_”

“There is a runaway trolley,” says Deceit in Thomas’s best ‘Storytime’ voice, “with no driver at the wheel – barrelling down the tracks.”

“But Remus is right here,” says Patton.

“There is a runaway trolley with no driver possessed of any sort of survival instinct or common sense, barreling down the tracks,” Deceit corrects smoothly. “And ahead on the tracks, there are five innocent people tied down, _directly in the trolley’s path. _If the trolley continues as it is – ”

“Squish!” contributes Remus cheerfully. “Five instant roadkill dinners, fresh and ready to serve!”

Indeed, when Thomas squints ahead, he can see five indistinct, nondescript people – tied to the tracks, check; directly in the trolley’s path, check.

“And on track B,” Deceit says, and waves one gloved hand off to the left, where the path of the tracks clearly diverges. “Much the same – another tragic case of being tied to a track, unable to move! The only difference being that, if the trolley switches course, it will only end up hitting _one _tragic victim, as opposed to five. The choice, of course, is up to you, my dear Thomas Sanders.” A grin and a wink and a tip of his flat-brimmed cap, and Thomas looks down to see a large lever in the centre of the carriage, right in arm’s reach for him. It’s currently all the way to the right. “I leave the fate of these poor unfortunate souls in your hands.”

“I’ve seen the memes,” Thomas says. “Isn’t the person making the decision supposed to be off to one side of the tracks?”

“Mmmmaybe,” says Deceit. “But isn’t it more fun this way?”

“I wouldn’t call anything about this entire situation _fun,_ no,” Virgil says. “Or anything about my _existence_, come to think of it. This sucks! Everything sucks!”

“No need to be so nihilistic,” Deceit says. “That’s next week’s lecture. Save it ‘til then.”

“Hey!” Remus yells. “Here’s a thought – how about, instead of arguing about _boring _things that you’re all a million shades of wrong about, you start paying attention to the big screen? Because, let me tell you, things are about to get _juicy_.”

“I’d listen to him, if I were you,” sing-songs Deceit, resting his head against the pole his arm is wrapped around.

Thomas looks up and yelps as he sees that the divergence in their journey is approaching quickly. Way too quickly for his liking. From a distance, the people tied to the tracks had seemed amorphous and indistinct, but now it’s really quite clear that they’re nothing of the sort. They’re exact clones of him, down to what he’s currently wearing. All of them. “Oh _god _– Remus, that’s just sick! _Why!_”

“Hey, don’t look at me!” Remus is quick to defend. “That one was all his idea!”

“I thought it might give you a bit more incentive to take this seriously,” Deceit says. He’s got his shiny golden pocketwatch in one hand “After all, _your _self-preservation instinct is in entirely working order. I would know, really!” He checks the watch, clicking it open with one practiced movement. “Oh dear. Might want to hurry up with that decision making – only ten seconds left!”

“_Uhh_,” goes Thomas, and looks at the five identical hims directly in the trolley’s path, and then the other, equally identical him, down the alternate path.

Virgil lets out a strangled shriek that sounds like a million year’s worth of fury and frustration being released in a single, hoarse note. He doesn’t offer up anything to say about the situation, but judging by the massive amounts of anxiety setting his entire nervous system on fire right now, his opinion on ‘which track to pick’ seems to be a flat, resounding ‘no’.

“_Pull the lever pull the lever pull the lever_,” yells Patton, who apparently does have very strong opinions on how many Thomases to murder, slamming his hands over his eyes.

With nobody else to consult – Deceit is just sitting there, smirking and _Remus _sure isn’t going to be any help – Thomas grabs the lever with hands that are suddenly far sweatier than they had been only moments ago, and heaves as hard as he can. With a terrible unwilling mechanical noise, the track in front of them switches. The trolley goes screaming around the corner and careens directly into the single clone-Thomas.

The quality of the blood and guts and gore that go splashing everywhere on impact is entirely too realistic by far. The quantity sure isn’t.

The trolley continues hurtling down the endless track at a consistently breakneck pace, but now its lovely rainbow exterior is coated in a delightful new coat of unrealistically extensive dark, dripping paint.

“Whoa there, Tommy-boy!” says Remus. “Didn’t think you’d actually take me up on that suggestion of killing yourself! Nice one – high five?”

“Remus, can you maybe _please _stop holding out my own severed hand in my direction,” Thomas says. He can see flecks of blood on his nose and cheeks.

“You killed four less people than you would have if you’d done nothing,” Patton says miserably. “So why do I feel _worse_, somehow?”

“You really shouldn’t,” Deceit says, and swings his legs thoughtfully. Somehow, he’s managed to remain miraculously untouched by the shower of bloodspray. “Let’s think on that for a while, why don’t we? Why is it that, even when you make the most logically and – empirically and utilitarian-wise – ethically sound decision, you still feel _really super bad _about the consequences of your actions?”

“Well,” says Virgil. “It may be because – and I’m just grasping at straws here, so feel free to stop me if I’m wrong – those actions ended in _murder_.”

“Correct!” says Deceit, pointing one gloved hand right at Virgil, and pumping the bell three times in a row. “One big shiny gold star to our dear Mister Virgil!”

“Wow, thanks,” Virgil deadpans.

“But consider _this_,” Deceit says. “Death would have occurred as a result of either action you could have taken! It was completely out of your hands – and if you had chosen to not touch the switch at all; to just step back and let nature – or Remus, as the case may be – take its course – could you really have been said to be accountable for the results?”

“He – yes!” Patton says. “Thomas couldn’t just sit back and watch something like that happen without doing something! That’d be wrong!”

“Especially when they all look exactly like me,” Thomas mutters, staring at the bloodspray all over the front of the trolley.

“And yet,” says Deceit, “you’re still unhappy with the outcome. Funny, that. It’s almost as if life is suffering and pain, and not a single choice we make will do anything to avert that!”

“_Now _who’s the nihilist?” Virgil says, glaring.

“Let’s try this again!” says Deceit, neatly ignoring him – and now a new divergence in the tracks is approaching them. “On the left, five perfectly innocent people that you don’t know in the _least._” At a squint, it appears to be true – Thomas doesn’t recognize any of the people tied to the tracks. They’re certainly not him, which is definitely an improvement. Although not much of one. “And on the right...”

“Joan?!” Virgil, Patton and Thomas yell in horrified unison. Because it is. Because some part of Thomas’s brain has a dreadful obsession with making his best friend suffer and that part is probably Remus and _he should really talk to someone about that come to think of it._

“You _monster_,” Virgil accuses.

“Five innocent people, or your bestest, loveliest, most _wonderful _friend in the whole wide world,” Deceit says. “What a choice! Better make it fast.”

“Well,” says Patton, glancing over at Thomas. “Obviously it’s – ” He flounders visibly. “ – I mean, for all we know, those five people – some of them could have terminal lung cancer!”

“They all have families and pets and kinks and _stunningly _detailed, intricate backstories,” interjects Remus from the driver’s seat. “I can show you my Google Doc for them if you want!”

“Pets?” Patton says, stricken.

“Some of them are even _kittens,_” Remus breathes, eyes wide.

“We’ve gotta kill Joan,” says Patton seriously, turning to Thomas.

“_Patton,_” Virgil says, horrified.

"Is that all it takes to sway my sense of morality into homicide?” Thomas asks somewhat hysterically. “_Imaginary kittens? _What is _wrong _with me?”

“It’s homiecide, actually,” says Remus helpfully. “Since you’re murdering a friend and everything!”

“Do you people ever stop talking?” Deceit says with a frown. “You’re about to hit the fork in the tracks in, oh, about fifteen seconds.”

Virgil blanches. “Fifteen-? – _Thomas, you’ve gotta do something!_”

They are now close enough to the tracks that the imaginary Joan tied to the right-hand track is entirely visible. They look up and wave cheerfully up at Thomas, which... it really, _really _isn’t helping matters at all. “Okay, okay – uh – _uh _– ”

“Hi, Thomas!” calls out the imaginary Joan. “Nice train! It’s really gay!”

“Thanks!” Thomas yells, on the verge of tears. “It’s actually a trolley! My capacities for deception and horrifying night thoughts teamed up to make it for the sole purpose of tormenting me endlessly!”

“Hey, that’s metal as fuck, actually,” says Imaginary Joan. They look over and catch sight of the people tied to the other track. “Oh no! Is that elderly Mr Robertson, my sweet old ex-piano teacher from third grade? What is he doing tied to that trolley track that you and your cool gay trolley are currently screaming towards at deadly velocities?”

“What?” Virgil says from next to Thomas. “Where did that even come from?”

“And there’s the backstory,” Remus says smugly. “Granted, that’s not as neat as I would have _liked _it to be, but, oh well! You’ve got to fit it in somewhere!”

“If Mr Robertson dies,” monologues Imaginary Joan, “I’ll be completely devastated. So incredibly heartbroken. Torn up inside like tissue paper. I’ll never get over it!”

“You can’t run over that guy, Thomas!” Patton says. “Joan will hate you forever!”

“The alternative is _killing Joan!_” Thomas objects.

“Sounds like you should probably kill Joan, then!” Remus says.

Thomas is losing his god damn mind. Or maybe he’s already lost it, judging by the way that things are going. His fingers tighten around the lever -

“Hang on,” says Virgil, frowning at the track. “This has been a lot longer than fifteen seconds...”

“Oh,” says Deceit. “Oh, right – almost forgot. Whoops!”

The train coasts forwards and slams straight through five people that don’t exist. The fact that they don’t exist does nothing to stop the inevitable gorefest. They are all extremely dead. Mr Robertson is super fucking dead. Thomas has just killed five people through inaction. He is a terrible person on every conceivable level.

“_Why would you do this to him?_” Imaginary Joan howls in imaginary anguish as the trolley passes them. “Blocked! Reported! Unfriended for life! Get out of my sight forever, Thomas Sanders!”

“This is so unbelievably traumatizing,” Thomas mutters as the train enters a new stretch of tracks.

“Isn’t it just!” Remus says, delighted.

Deceit tugs on the cord dangling from the ceiling again, letting off a cheerful string of _ding_s. With every passing second, he seems happier and happier. He is absolutely, one-hundred percent, completely in his element. It would probably even be endearing if the circumstances weren’t so terrible. “Very good show!” he says approvingly. “There are no wrong answers, of course, but these are some _very _interesting ones.”

“Hey, Mr Moral Philosophy,” Virgil says angrily. “I think you might need to check your lesson plan. Or maybe call Logan in to give a _correct _opinion that doesn’t involve blatant lies. This isn’t even how the trolley problem _works_.”

“_Hm_,” hms Deceit. “Now that you mention it, I realize that I seem to be breaking the spirit of the game a bit.”

“You _think?_”

“I’ve never thought about anything in my life,” says Deceit promptly. “Let’s try this again!”

A new decision approaches. But it’s somehow approaching quicker this time.

“This is just the same one as before,” Thomas says.

“Mm, true enough,” says Deceit. “But if you look over there, you’ll see that this time Joan’s on the _right._”

“Left,” says Patton.

“Whatever you say,” Deceit trills.

“What does that have to do with anything?” Virgil demands.

“Nothing,” says Deceit. “I’ve just remembered, though. The original concept of the trolley problem? It’s to test how you’d react to a dilemma like this in the split-second that it’s presented to you. The whole idea is to judge how good or bad of a person you are based on what you instinctively do. Talking about it isn’t even supposed to be a part of the problem.”

Thomas has enough time to think, _that doesn’t sound right, _and then Imaginary Joan says, “Hi, Thomas! Nice train! It’s super gay!”

“Thanks?” says Thomas. They’re _definitely _moving faster than before. The junction is looming closer and closer. “But wait. Didn’t we just – ”

Thomas doesn’t have time to even _think _about pulling the switch, much less actually doing it.

The trolley hits the junction. Joan goes _splat_, and also goes everywhere.

“WHY ARE YOU SUCH A TOTALLY AND IRREFUTABLY TERRIBLE PERSON IN EVERY POSSIBLE WAY,” Patton wails, covered head-to-toe in imaginary blood.

“THAT’S BLACK AND WHITE THINKING, DAD, AND WE AGREED THAT WE WERE GOING TO TRY TO DO LESS OF THAT,” Virgil screams, also pretty liberally splattered in gore. “BUT ALSO? YOU SUCK AND EVERYTHING ABOUT THIS ALSO SUCKS. I WANT TO GO HOME NOW PLEASE.”

“_JOAN,_” Thomas yells, understandably distraught.

The trolley goes trundling on, uncaring of their distress. Stupid trolley, with its unfairly gorgeous rainbow paintwork. Stupid ethical dilemmas. Stupid _Deceit. _

“So what did we learn from all of that?” Deceit asks.

“Well, we learned that you’re a _jerk,_” Virgil snaps.

“Correct,” says Deceit, in a way that heavily implies he doesn’t mean it in the least and is waiting for another answer. When nobody volunteers one, he gives one of those over-the-tops sighs of his and says, “Well, we _learned _that spending too much time making a decision can lead to the death of one of your closest and dearest friends!”

“Uh, no, I’m pretty sure we learned that you’re a jerk,” is Virgil’s opinion.

“No, it was definitely the death thing,” Deceit says.

“Can we please not do any more murder?” Patton pleads. “Can’t we just do the trolley thing, but with – toy trains! And kittens! Something like that!”

“Excellent idea!” Remus says, perking up. “_Miniature kitten murder!_ Ohh, _daddy, _you’ve really got all the best ideas – I can see why my brother likes you!”

“N – no,” Patton says. “No, that’s not – ”

“What even is the _point_ of any of this?” Thomas interrupts. Actually, it’s more like pleading. Begging. He really wants an explanation for this whole thing. Preferably one that means doesn’t involve him having an extended psychotic break wherein parts of his personality just torment him for no good reason.

“Does there have to be a point?” Deceit asks.

“Yeah!” says Remus, kicking his legs enthusiastically. “We could just be being evil for the sake of it – that sounds like something I’d do! Except, we’re not!”

“Oh, do tell,” says Virgil.

“Don’t tell,” Deceit says instantly, with a threatening little wiggle of his fingers.

“I wasn’t gonna,” Remus mutters, with a little huff. “Honestly, it’s like you don’t trust me at all, Deedee – ”

“I trust absolutely no-one and nobody,” Deceit says, honey-smooth. “It’s literally part of my job description. All right – one last scenario!”

“I don’t think – ” Patton begins

“Correct,” Deceit snaps. “You never think properly about anything, and _that_ is the problem.” He tugs sharply on the bell-rope. It _ding_s, but the noise isn’t quite as charming and twee as it had been earlier. The trolley jolts unpleasantly underneath them, and then suddenly the suburban landscape rolling past them becomes more jagged and indistinct – the shadows sharper, the lights more glaring. The wheels of the trolley clatter and clank as it bustles onwards towards a new point in the tracks up ahead.

On the left –

“Me?” Thomas says. “Again?” He squints. “That’s just one of me, though – who’s on the other-?”

And then he sees the two people tied to the other length of tracks that they’ll hit if he pulls the lever. Or more accurately, first he sees the bridal train and the tasteful black-and-white tuxedo that the two of them are wearing, respectively – and really, Thomas doesn’t need Logan to figure out who they are.

“Oh,” he says, staring at Lee and Mary-Lee as they struggle against their ropes and yell out for help – far more realistically, it must be noted, then any of the _previous _imaginary trolley victims had been struggling – with a kind of dawning sense of horror, “oh, come _on._ Really, Deceit? _Really?_”

“I represent your career!” his clone yells helpfully from the other part of the tracks, as if Thomas hadn’t worked that out already.

“What’s the implication here?” Virgil says. “Are you trying to say that by choosing the callback over the wedding, Thomas is somehow running two of his close friends over with a trolley?”

“It’s a metaphor,” says Deceit, somewhat grumpily.

“But – but, yeah!” Patton says. “What he said – that doesn’t make much sense. We already did a whole thing about how skipping out on the callback isn’t necessarily the _death _of Thomas’s career! It’s not even close! Objection!” he adds, pointing at Deceit. “Tampering with the evidence!”

“Wrong video,” says Thomas. “And I’m pretty sure that wouldn’t apply anyway.”

“Fine,” says Deceit. “Not the death of your career, then. How about the death of your hopes and dreams?” He snaps his fingers angrily, and now it’s no longer Thomas on the right-hand track – it’s Roman.

“Hey!” exclaims Roman. “What is this – _Thomas? _Is that you?”

“Wait a second,” says Thomas. “Is that _actually _Roman?”

“What? _No_,” says Deceit.

Virgil stiffens at that, and says, “Well, that’s a lie, which means that _is _Princey, and we’re about to fucking flatten him I _guess, _which – sure! Why not! This might as well happen!”

“_No!_” wails Patton. “Stop the train!”

“Just tore out the emergency brake system!” Remus reports cheerfully, tossing a freshly-dismembered set of components over his shoulder. “It’s full steam ahead, baby, for the rest of eternity!”

“_THE INSIDE OF MY HEAD IS A FUCKING NIGHTMARE,” _Thomas wails.

“What’s going on?” yells Roman, from where he’s tied to the tracks. “Hello? I was kind of in the middle of something! You know I’m always down for a good damsel-in-distress scenario but usually I prefer to be the one doing the rescuing – and for it to be a _consensual _sort of thing – ”

The split in the tracks is almost unbearably close now. There’s only seconds left before the trolley hits the junction and yes, all right, no matter what Thomas chooses to do here there’s going to be literally no repercussions whatsoever. Lee and Mary-Lee are so imaginary it’s not funny, and Roman – well, Roman will probably be fine. Probably. Logan survived a ninja star to the brain that one time, and running someone over with a moving vehicle can’t be all _that _different, right? Right?

...oh god.

This is all just... a metaphor. Or a simile, or something. Thomas doesn’t know and he barely cares at this point because he does know _this – _this is all just another extended song-and-dance to make him admit something about his decision-making abilities. If he hits Roman, it’ll prove something, and if he hits his two soon-to-be-wedded-merrily-ever-after friends, it’ll prove something else, and it’ll all come down to Deceit making a clever point and he – he doesn’t want that.

He _doesn’t want this. _

“_No!_” yells Thomas, and slams his hands down on the wheel, shoving Remus out of the seat and taking his place at the controls. “I’m not doing this and you can’t make me! I shouldn’t have to choose! I am _not –_ ” He grits his teeth, and wrenches the wheel violently sideways, as far as it can go. “ – playing – ” Further and further, and then it hits a point where he can’t turn it any further and it just snaps off in his hands. “ – along –_ with your stupid murder game!_” He lets out a shriek of frustration, and kicks the trolley as hard as he can – and it bumps and jolts into the air briefly, before listing dangerously sideways and derailing entirely.

...Thomas screams. Virgil screams. Patton screams. Remus also screams, but he’s probably just doing it for fun and not out of any kind of genuine terror.

Deceit does not scream – not even as the trolley crashes through several rows of cardboard-and-plasterboard prop nightmare suburban scenery. He just sits at the front of the trolley, enduring the splinters and paper-mâché that he’s getting showered with, and staring blankly out into the approaching darkness.

“Shit,” he says after maybe ten seconds of consecutive screaming and crashing-through-landscapes, and presses a hand to his face. “Okay.”

There’s one last wall that the trolley speeds directly into, an endless gargantuan blackness that reaches as far as the eye can see in every direction, and as the trolley crumples into it it shatters in every direction, and then Thomas nearly falls over, reaching out to steady himself against his backyard screen door just in time. Patton isn’t so lucky – he pitches right off the edge of the porch (_again_) and disappears into the shrubbery with a faint yelp.

“Cool!” says Virgil brightly, pushing himself to his feet. “Here’s a fun thought! Let’s never do that or anything remotely resembling that ever again!”

“That went _brilliantly_,” says Deceit, now out of the conductor costume and back into his usual attire. “And I don’t agree with you in the least.”

The sun’s burning on Thomas’s face. He’s pretty sure he’s got a really terrible sunburn at this point. He says, “Are you going to explain yourself now, or not?”

“How about no,” says Deceit, “and we all just forget this ever happened at all? This isn’t a suggestion. This is exactly what’s going to happen, and I’m planning on enforcing it with a vengeance.”

“Not so fast, villain!” Roman comes rising up, from the other side of the group – somewhat less-than-elegantly. Brushing frayed bits of rope away from his shoulders and hair, he clambers up onto the porch. “Never fear, the prince is here! – and it’s pretty _clear _the prince’s cheer has been pretty se_vere_ly dented. Because someone just tried to run him over in fifth _gear!_” He takes a moment to pat down his ruffled hair. “...hm, was that perhaps too many rhymes? Unclear.”

“Roman!” Patton cheers, emerging from the shrubbery.

“You used the clear one already,” Virgil points out with a little quirk of his eyebrow, although his shoulders relax somewhat.

“Did I _ask?_” Roman says, raising an eyebrow in return, and then, markedly more sincerely: “Actually, I did – thank you, Virgil, I will take that into consideration – _oof!_”

This last bit is due to Thomas pretty much throwing himself at Roman bodily and wrapping him into an enthusiastic bearhug. “_Roman! _Oh man, I’m so glad I didn’t accidentally kill you in some horrible nightmare dimension!”

Roman is the sort of guy who’s always down for a good enthusiastic hug, so it’s normal that he just kind of rolls with it, picking Thomas up and swinging him around (which, a) _hell yeah airborne hug, _b) he can’t even begin to imagine what anyone watching would think of _that_ so it’s probably best not to dwell on it) before planting a smooch on Thomas’s forehead and releasing him. “Yes! I’m not dead, no thanks to _some _Sides I could mention.” He glares over at Deceit and Remus. “Seriously, what _is _your problem?”

Remus shrugs and makes that wordless _I don’t know _noise that’s kind of universal. “This one was all on him!” he says, and does double finger-guns at Deceit. “Unless you mean today’s dilemma’s graphic design – emphasis on the ‘graphic’! – in which case, I will take any _and _all questions, and also gifts – especially if they’re rotting!”

“I’m asking you _again,_” says Thomas. “_What was the point of that?_ If you were trying to remind me that I’m conflicted about the wedding, then – yeah, thanks! I got that already, weirdly enough!”

“Thomas already feels torn up enough about it,” Patton says. “You don’t need to go and _actually _tear up his friends and _him _up about it, too!”

“There’s a difference between ‘tearing up’ people and ‘running them over’,” Remus says. “Want me to demonstrate?”

“Please don’t!”

“Deceit?” says Thomas, refusing to be distracted by his usual million other threads of thought and internal dialogue for once.

Deceit is silent. Which. _Hm._

Virgil eyes him up with a calculating sort of look. “I’m not Logan,” he says, glancing over at Thomas. “But... something to do with snap decisions, right?”

“I’m also not Logan!” Patton says.

Everyone waits expectantly, but there’s no followup to that.

“Thank you for clarifying, Pat,” Virgil says.

“No problem!”

“Where _is _Logan, anyway?” Roman says. “Isn’t this the sort of thing he loves getting his logical little fingers all over.”

“Deceit doesn’t like having Logan around when he’s trying to slam-dunk philosophy lectures onto us,” Virgil says. “It really cramps his style, having logic present in the room. I can’t imagine _why._”

Thomas takes a deep breath. Exhales. This isn’t important right now.

“You were trying to tell me that making snap decisions isn’t a good idea,” he says, staring at Deceit. In response, he receives a single slow blink. “Specifically, decisions related to the wedding-callback thing...” The penny drops. “_Hang on. _Is this about Roman’s decision?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Deceit says.

“It _is,_” Thomas says, torn between horror and a kind of weird delight. “This was you being _petty_ because you thought Roman jumped to a conclusion too quickly!”

“What?” Roman says. “_What?_ This was about me all along, and you only brought me in for a dramatic kick-the-dog scene at the very climax of the story?! Why, you – ”

“Because that’s _totally_ the full story!” snaps Deceit, cutting off the inevitable overdramatic tirade. “Look, _maybe _that could _possibly _be partly the reason I engineered all that, but – Thomas, please believe me when I tell you that _you need to make up your mind on this. _If you keep going back and forth like this, it’s going to wreck you in ways you can’t even begin to understand. Especially if you’re still conflicted when the actual day comes around.”

There’s a ring of truth to it. Well – everything that Deceit says has a bit of an uncanny ring of truth to it, but Thomas would like to think that he can tell the difference, when it comes down to it. Although of course he _would_ like to think that, either way – no. He can’t start down _that _particular rabbit hole, or he’ll never make it out. It seems to be the truth. That’s going to have to be enough for not.

“That’s it?” he says.

Deceit sighs. “Yes,” he says. “That’s it.”

A moment of silence.

“You know,” says Thomas. “You could just try expressing your opinions clearly and succinctly next time. Sitting down over a cup of coffee and having a nice chat with me. Just – _talking, _maybe? Instead of going through a whole overblown roleplay and making me question things about how much of a bad person I am _every single time._”

Deceit actually laughs. “Thomas, you don’t like yourself nearly enough for that to be a viable option,” he says, uncharacteristically blunt.

“...Ouch,” says Virgil, after a moment of silence.

“That... that can’t be true,” says Patton.

“Then explain us,” Remus challenges. 

“I don’t want to,” Thomas says.

“And that’s part of the problem,” Deceit says, and there’s a bit of a horrified little silence where everyone except him and Remus (who’s amusing himself by picking open a scab on his arm that Thomas had been determinedly not scratching at while it healed) exchange glances painted in a million shades of _no _and _wait _and _hang on _and _oh god here we go _again.

When this has stretched out long enough, Deceit clears his throat, and looks at Remus. “Come on,” he says. “We’ve bothered Thomas for long enough, I think.”

“Nah, I’ll stay,” Remus says brightly. “I like seeing the sun properly! It burns! And he can hear me so much better up here!”

“_Remus_,” says Deceit, and the way he says it is almost legitimately scary. Remus hesitates, curses under his breath, and nods. He waves with a distinct hint of sulk to the motion – and then he actually sinks out without another word. Deceit follows.

Thomas stares at the spot where Deceit had disappeared, and then looks over at the less-than-tasteful bloodstain marking Remus’s own point of departure. (It’ll disappear in an hour, and not a moment before. He knows from experience.)

“Okay,” he says, and then, “_okay,_” and he sighs. Another day, another box full of issues to unpack. Nothing new. “Anyone up for that drink we were talking about before all this happened?”

“Carefully ignoring your problems in the vain hope that they’ll go away?” says Virgil, and snorts. “Sounds good. I’m in.”

“I’m going to deal with it,” insists Thomas, wrenching open the screen door maybe a tad too forcefully. “Eventually.”

He sees Roman and Patton exchange worried glances in the reflection of the window, and Virgil pull a tight-lipped face, and there’s just the faintest hint of yellow there too, but when he blinks it’s gone. So everything’s all right. Really, it is.

“Drinks,” he says. “Drinks, and then we cook dinner.”

And for better or worse, that’s exactly what they do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Inspired wholeheartedly by that One Episode of the Good Place, because I remembered it while thinking about philosophy and was like. _Hm. Sounds like a thing Thomas would unknowingly inflict upon himself_. I haven’t watched that episode for ages, though, so any similarities beyond the base concept are entirely accidental.
> 
> Endcard is [here on my Tumblr](https://sometimes-love-is-enough.tumblr.com/post/614294590260936705/pick-a-side-chapter-4-anonymous-sanders). (I have a Tumblr now! Come follow me!)
> 
> ...so, how’s quarantine treating everyone? Yeah. That’s a whole thing, huh. But on a cheery sort of note, I _have_ been getting more writing done than usual! Hence, this! Although mostly I’ve been working on a longfic for the TS Big Bang (which will be posted in August), and oh man I’m so excited for you guys to see this. More on that closer to the date, probably!
> 
> Hope y'all are doing well. Stay safe. We're gonna get through this and throw the biggest fucking party when we all come out the other end, and that is a Min Promise™™™


	5. i love you and everything is beautiful (i)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I need WikiHow,” says Thomas.
> 
> “Hm,” says Logan. “Do you know, I think that’s the first time I’ve ever heard anyone state that out loud, unironically.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Slight spoilers for Putting Others First, of course. Also warnings for: unreality, dubious gaslighting, existential crises. They’re all rather mild, though. Honestly this chapter is probably the tamest thing I've written in a while.
> 
> Heads-up – this is part one of (at least) two. Yes, that’s right. For the next however-long-it’s-going-to-be, Pick A Side is serialized. Even though I explicitly said at the beginning I wasn’t going to do that. Oh well. I’ve changed my mind about many things since I started writing for this fandom, I guess. much like Janus, I am a lying liar who lies

Thomas wakes to the angry noise of his phone vibrating against the glass of water on his side table and, the slightly muffled (but no less furious) sound of someone’s car horn blaring insistently and repetitively right outside his window.

“Mmphgh,” he says eloquently, and then he makes an uncoordinated grab for his phone. On the first try, he knocks the glass of water sideways, and it spills all over the bedside table and onto the carpet. He manages to get it together long enough to scoop his phone up before it gets soaked, too.

It’s six-fifty in the morning, according to his lockscreen, and he has approximately fifteen texts and two missed calls. All of these texts are along the same lines: _where are you? We’re going to be late. Get out here right now before I break into your house and drag your useless ass into the car myself. _

It occurs to him that the pointed honking from outside is probably connected to this, and then it takes him another full ten seconds to realize that the likelihood is _extremely _high that he’s forgotten some important early-morning commitment and he needs to get out of bed immediately. He makes another undignified sleepy noise of _oh god I need to get up and this sucks _and somehow manages to roll himself sideways off the mattress and into a sort of half-crouch on the ground which he straightens himself up from, and then it’s over to the wardrobe to get dressed.

It’s not _cold_ today, not exactly, but it had been really warm and comfortable under the covers, and... it’s not even seven yet.

“Why did I schedule a thing this early in the morning?” he mutters under his breath to his empty room. He tugs out jeans, a t-shirt. Considers them. “This is too early a time to be doing a thing at. What sort of thing even _is _this? Is this a fancy thing? Do I need to get dressed up for this thing?”

There’s no response, but the honking from outside _does _seem to indicate that it’s a pretty urgent sort of thing, so he goes for a plain casual polo and roughly brushes his hair into some semblance of neatness before tripping down the stairs with a pair of socks in one hand. He grabs his shoes, texts ‘_SORRY SORRY OMW COMING_’ clumsily with one hand, and grabs a handful of breakfast bars from the kitchen counter. He has his phone, his wallet, his keys, and he hopes that the faint niggling sensation that he’s forgotten something super important is just plain old anxiety and not anything _serious._

By the time he stumbles out of his front door just under a minute later, he’s feeling pretty confident that he a) doesn’t look like a _complete _mess of a human being and b) is ready to bullshit his way into pretending that he knows exactly what he’s supposed to be doing this morning. Rule one of acting on the go; nodding and smiling will get you everywhere.

Thomas locks the front door quickly behind him, spends a sleep-deprived second remembering how to smile like he means it, then hurries down the front steps and towards the beat-up old Opel Corsa idling on the street outside. It’s purple, which is weird, because he doesn’t think any of his friends have purple cars, but whatever. Sometimes he forgets stuff like this. That’s normal.

“Hey!” he says brightly as he circles around to the passenger door. He opens it. “I am _super _sorry, I must’ve forgotten to turn on my alarm – ”

He freezes in place, halfway to sliding into the seat.

“Thomas, do you _want _to be late,” Virgil snarls at him from the driver’s seat, hunched angrily over the steering wheel. He’s got a phone clutched in one hand, the texting app still open on the screen, and has a grip on the wheel with the other so tight his knuckles are going white. “Come on, get _in!_”

“_Uh,_” goes Thomas, wide-eyed and _extremely _confused.

Virgil gives him a very familiar _you’re-not-moving-fast-enough _look. That baleful eyeshadow-enhanced glare from under a messy fringe. Thomas is getting into the car before he can even process properly what’s going on, and Virgil huffs out something that sounds like ‘freaking _finally_’, and then he shoves the car into first gear, and they’re heading off down the street at... a fairly sedate pace, actually. Thomas would have expected a slightly more frenetic speed from the mood he’s in, but apparently Virgil is a careful sort of driver. And also drives manual. And also has a tiny little fluffy spider ornament hanging from the rearview mirror? _What is going on?_

“It’s nearly seven,” says Virgil, glancing at the car clock, and then over at Thomas. There’s still a lot of that frustrated glare in it, but there’s a notable hint of something closer to resigned friendliness there. Like the ‘I’m annoyed with you but we’ve known each other for so long that I’ll probably be cool in like five minutes’ sort of friendliness. Thomas would assume, anyway. “_Please _don’t tell me you stayed up to midnight last night watching Brooklyn 99 or something, _again._”

“Um,” Thomas says, and searches his memory. He comes up with a grand total of absolutely nothing, but it does sound like the sort of thing he’d do, so... “I guess I must have?”

Virgil rolls his eyes, not unaffectionately. “You gotta get your sleep schedule back on track, dude. I’m not helping you out with your whole car thing if you’re gonna make us _both _late for work.”

“You’re... not?”

“Fuck no, I’m not. You can walk or find someone else to carpool with. Or, you know, stop sleeping in. Dumbass.” Virgil wrenches it up to second gear as they turn off onto a main road. “...Obviously not for real, I’m – I wouldn’t do that. But get some sleep. And _stop sleeping in.”_

“The two might be mutually exclusive,” Thomas points out.

“Go to sleep earlier,” Virgil suggests with a challenging little raise of the eyebrows. 

“Um... look who’s talking?” Thomas says, still bewildered at the direction this conversation’s progressing in. It feels right, but it also feels... _off._

Virgil makes a little annoyed noise, and then, “Come on, Thomas, you don’t need to call me out like this. And this isn’t about me, because I can survive on less than an hour of sleep and still be conscious enough to not murder the customers when they do stupid things. This is about _you. _Because you _can’t._”

Thomas blinks. “Not murder the customers?”

“_Survive._”

“All right,” says Thomas, because it seems like a pretty neutral, non-committal answer as far as answers go, and looks out the windscreen. As he does, he realizes that he doesn’t have the faintest clue where they’re going. The streets are the right colors and shapes and structure, and he recognizes the familiar townscape, but if you asked him, he wouldn’t be able to even hazard a guess at the name of the street they’re driving down. But, to be honest, that’s the least of his problems right now.

Thomas reaches over and pats at Virgil’s bare arm, curious. He’s wearing his usual hoodie, but the sleeves are half-rolled up, like he’d had to psych himself up physically to bombard Thomas with angry texts. His arm is warm and solid and there’s not even the slightest bit of doubt that he’s actually there.

Now Virgil isn’t looking at him all annoyed-like. It’s now confused with a side of worried. “Not that I don’t appreciate you giving my arm a tender, loving massage or whatever, but... what gives?”

Thomas takes a moment to consider this. He does not let go of Virgil’s arm.

“Virgil,” he says eventually. “Do you think that something could maybe possibly be extremely very wrong with this situation?”

“Well, yes,” Virgil says. “Several things, actually. Here they are, in no particular order: you’re currently holding onto my arm with a weird amount of intensity. We’re going to be late to work because you decided to sleep in _again. _Those jerks across the street at the shop keep sending us what I _assume _are weird death threats and that’s getting me antsy, I’ve just hit a red light so we’re going to be even later than I thought_, _I tripped out of bed this morning so my ankle is currently hurting like hell but not, like, bad enough for it to need medical attention or anything. And finally, I’ve just started worrying about the fact that I probably left the garage lights on and Thomas, I’m going to drive my electricity bill up _so _high. So fucking high.” He takes a beat to breathe in very, very deeply, looking like he’s either about to start sobbing or screaming, and then he nods at Thomas. “That’s about it, really. Why do you ask?”

“...No reason,” Thomas says.

Virgil turns a corner and then another one, and then they’re on a long strip of coffeeshops and bookstores and other social shops and places. It’s only seven, so there’s not all that many people out and about. As they draw up to the biggest coffeeshop on the street, Virgil lets out a tiny grunt in the key of _oh thank god._

Thomas gets a glimpse of the name of the coffeeshop as Virgil pulls into the tiny strip of a parking lot on the side of the building – **_SANDERS’ SIDES_**.

He lets out a tiny noise in the tuneful, horrified key of _you have got to be fucking kidding me _harmonic minor. Thankfully, it’s a _very _tiny noise so Virgil doesn’t notice. Although that might be because he’s currently muttering to himself as he navigates an extremely stressful parallel parking job in the one remaining spot in the lot. And he does it, with impressive precision, which is more than Thomas can say for any of his _own _parallel parking attempts. It’s probably something to do with that performance-anxiety relation thing. Yerkes-Dodson curve. Whatever.

They get out of the car. Virgil locks it behind them, and then double and triple checks that it’s actually locked, and then they head around the front to go into the coffeeshop. Thomas glances up, just to be sure he read the sign properly and wasn’t just hallucinating it or something, but – nope, it’s still there. In a cheerful rainbow gradient and round friendly font, right above the cute curtains and glass double-doors with various pride flags pasted all over the windows.

Inside, it’s unbelievably quaint and adorable. The literal platonic ideal of a coffeeshop, although there don’t appear to be any customers at all yet. Clusters of tables and chairs, armchairs lining the walls, an honest-to-god fireplace against one wall (unlit), lots of LGBT memorabilia and art on every wall and surface. The menu has a long list of delicious-sounding dishes picked out in hipster-style white all-caps, and every second one seems to be a coffee-themed pun of some sort. A small stage is on the far side of the room, with a rudimentary mic-and-speaker setup and an unplugged keyboard resting against one wall.

Thomas is _sure _he’d remember a coffeeshop that’s as perfectly up his alley as this one is, but he can’t. He can’t remember ever _looking _at one like this, let alone apparently _working _in it.

The counter has empty food platters with price labels for cookies and slices and cakes pinned to the lids, and there’s someone rummaging behind the counter, half-ducked down and placing empty mugs and plates up and to the side, for easy access.

“Sorry we’re late!” Virgil yells as they enter. The little bell over the door rings, a bit belatedly, as if put-out that Virgil had stolen away its chance to announce their presence. “Couch Potato here decided that _catching up on Netflix _was more important than his literal job!”

Roman emerges from behind the counter, bright red apron askew and half-hanging across his neat white button-down. He grabs an armful of empty coffee cups, and then rights himself, awkwardly tying the cords of the apron behind his back with his free arm. “Calm down, Livin’ On A Scare. Nobody’s here yet, and it’s a Thursday morning, so we don’t open for nearly half an hour. We’ve got _plenty _of time. Good morning, Thomas!”

“Hi, Roman,” says Thomas. “Quick question. Is it normal to suddenly feel like the entirety of reality has rewritten itself around you, leaving you adrift in a completely new universe that you don’t know the pattern or rules of? Or alternatively, is it normal to feel like the universe is out to get you, and specifically you, at all times, forever?”

Roman pauses, halfway through stacking the coffee cups facedown next to the register. “Er... no. I can’t say it is. To either of those things.”

“Okay,” Thomas says. “Good. Just checking.”

Roman gives him a long, hard look that somehow manages to convey confusion and quite a bit of concern at once. “Say, when was the last time you saw your therapist?”

“...I have a therapist?”

Virgil pats Thomas gently on the shoulder. “Yeah, uh. Thomas appears to be having a minor crisis this morning,” he explains to Roman. “Amnesia may or may not be involved. I’m hoping it’s just sleep deprivation or, if not, that he’ll get over it by the time the customers start to arrive. I refuse to be the one on latte art duty again.”

“Oh, right,” says Roman, looking relieved. He sets down the last of the coffee cups, and brushes his hands together briskly, as if to clear off any traces of non-existent dust. “Business as usual, then. Well, feel like a functional human being soon, Thomas! I’m going to get the lights on and set the tables. Ray Sorrow, it is your solemn and most sacred duty to make sure he doesn’t seriously injure himself in his delirious state, and maybe get the espresso machine up and running. It’s decided to abandon us in our time of need, again.”

“Oh, fuck off, you aren’t my boss,” Virgil says.

“Either you fix the damn thing or I have to,” Roman says. “And I don’t want to. So you’re doing it.”

“Flip you for it,” Virgil suggests, rolling his eyes.

“Of course.” Roman fishes out a quarter from the tip jar, and flicks the coin up into the air – a perfect flip, tumbling end over end to fall into his open hand. He slaps it onto the back of his hand. Heads. “And there you have it.” A grandiose gesture towards the counter. “Get to work, my friend. That machine isn’t going to fix itself.”

“This coffeeshop is a godless den of capitalism and tyranny,” Virgil says, sighing. “But fair’s fair, I guess. Shove over, let me have a look.”

Obligingly, Roman shuffles out of the way, and goes over to the other side of the room to start arranging chairs around tables and other coffeeshop upkeep-related endeavours. Virgil, true to his word, takes his place behind the counter, and eyes up the chrome behemoth of an espresso machine taking up half the space behind it like it’s insulted him personally in every language he knows and quite a few he doesn’t.

Thomas squeezes carefully past the leafless, sad-looking tree-in-a-pot that (for some reason) is positioned right next to the counter, and joins Virgil in eyeing up the espresso machine.

“For the record_,_” he says. “I’m not delirious. I’m just really confused.”

Virgil snorts. “Well, Logan’s not here, but if he were... he’d probably adjust his glasses smugly and point out that those two things are, in fact, synonyms. You’re acting _weird, _dude_. _Here.” He tugs a red apron identical to Roman’s off a hook behind the counter, and tosses it over to Thomas, who fumbles the catch, because of course he does. “Take a uniform.”

The nametag on the front of the apron says ‘THOMAS!’ in big rainbow letters that also happen to be in his own handwriting. He takes a split second to consider this, before looping it around his neck and tying it off at the waist. It’s not the worst thing he’s ever worn for the sake of a job. “I have questions.”

“You get three,” Virgil says. He tries to turn the coffee machine on, realizes the switch isn’t working, and hits it with a fist, pulling a face.

Three questions. All right. He can work with that. Except apparently he can’t, because being put on the spot makes it extremely hard to think up good questions, and he has a feeling ‘_what’s going on_’ isn’t going to get him very many answers. Really, the first one that comes to mind is...

“...Why is this place called _Sanders’ Sides_?”

Virgil, predictably, gives him a blank, uncomprehending look.

“I mean,” Thomas clarifies. “It’s not like I own it. Right? Since I work here, apparently.”

“_Nnno,_” says Virgil, very slowly, drawing it out for far too long. “But. Your dad does. That’s... how you got the job, remember?”

Thomas does not remember. His dad also does not run a coffeeshop, to the best of his knowledge. But method acting is all about _yes, and... _– so he just makes his best ‘ohh, I’m such an idiot’ face and laughs it off. “Right! Of course. Wow, I really _must _not have gotten enough sleep last night. Two more questions, right...?”

Virgil’s now opening up the espresso machine – to check out its internal mechanisms, presumably. It’s just a bunch of tubes and metal wires and labels that say things like ‘milk goes here’ and ‘for the love of god please don’t touch this’ and ‘EGGNOG’ (for some reason). He pauses to give Thomas a Look. “Yeah, and that was one of them. Nice one, genius.”

...Thomas can’t believe he actually made that mistake. He wants to slam his head against the nearest wall, but the nearest wall happens to be covered in a hipster cafe menu board, and the lettering is so neat and fancy he doesn’t want to disturb it. He settles for asking his next (and apparently last) question. “Where are Logan and Patton?”

“Well, Logan’s probably doing whatever tired nerdy chemistry majors do at seven-fifteen in the morning,” Virgil says. “I’d _like _to say sleeping, but he’s too much of a workaholic for that. But, uh. Do you always call your dad by his first name?”

Thomas’s brain short-circuits a little. By the time his speech abilities are back online and moderately functional, the lights in the coffeeshop are now all on the espresso machine is working and Virgil’s replacing the chrome frontplate with a slightly smug expression. It can be probably assumed that it’s working, anyway, because it’s humming slightly and emitting puffs of steam.

“Um,” says Thomas, and clears his throat. “Hm! Okay! Well, that’s a fun thing!” He’s aware that his voice is becoming higher and higher pitched, but can’t really be bothered to make a concerted effort to control it. “Gosh! Well, I’m just going to – hey, Roman, what sort of things do I usually do around here in the mornings?”

“Checking the inventory,” Roman says helpfully from across the room.

“_Checking the inventory it is!_” Thomas agrees, and is proud of how he only sounds very hysterical, as opposed to extremely. He spins around on his heel, ends up spinning around slightly too far, overbalances, crashes hip-first into a table, rights himself, and then practically sprints towards one of the two doors behind the counter. It’s labelled ‘Office’. It seems like a safe bet.

He spends the first thirty seconds after he slams the door closed behind him slumped against the wall muttering ‘_what the fuck what the fuck what the fuck’ _in an increasingly panicked, breathless loop. This isn’t entirely unusual for him, granted, but the circumstances are a lot weirder than usual.

When he’s feels like he’s had enough panic attack time, he takes a few deep breaths and pushes himself up and to his feet. Enough of that. Time to look around this office.

It’s a very small, very functional sort of office. A PC against one wall, a row of filing cabinets against another. Another wall has a moderately large pinboard covered in memos and schedules and shift information. Thomas draws closer to it, curious.

There’s a _lot _of stuff on the pinboard. Mostly they’re scribbled notes from Virgil and Roman between each other about placing orders and shifts, as well as some predictably petty arguments. Half of the left side seems to be entirely dedicated to a detailed, paragraph-by-paragraph debate breaking down who the objective best Animal Crossing villager is. (They’re both wrong, but Thomas doesn’t feel like telling them that because knowing them, things could get very messy very fast.)

There’s also a few memos from Patton. Thomas knows they’re from Patton because they’re all written on pawprint-print stationary and the puns are all highlighted and underlined twice, and while about half of them are things about prices and opening hours and general upkeep, the others are (predictably) upbeat, high-energy morale boosters.

Honestly, it seems like a really nice place to work. Except for the fact that Patton’s apparently his actual dad now and Logan is a college student and he works in a coffeeshop and_ what is going on?_

There’s a chair in this office, right in front of the computer. It looks like a comfortable enough chair. Thomas ignores it entirely, deciding instead to just sit right down on the ground where he is.

“Okay,” he says. “_Okay._”

Apparently he hadn’t given himself enough panic attack time earlier. He takes a few deep breaths; does four-seven-eight and five things/four things/three things/two things/one thing and all the rest, and when there aren’t spots dancing in front of his vision, he tries to summon his Sides. His creativity, his morality, his anxiety and his logic and his deception and even the creativity he doesn’t like to think about all that much – but it doesn’t work. None of them appear.

And of course it isn’t working, because Virgil and Roman are right outside the office, less than ten metres away and no need to summon them if they’re already there. And they’re apparently just... _people, _now. People that work at a coffeeshop and have jobs and salaries and bosses, just like him. And oh yes, he’s working at a coffeeshop. And Patton’s his _dad._

He keeps getting tripped up on that last bit, because... well, for all that his sense of morality plays into the dad stereotypes, goofy jokes and dad-like grins and paternal nicknames and style of dressing and all, it’s never been in question that all of that’s just flavour. It’s part of who Patton is, of course, and there’s no question that he _means _it, but he’s not actually Thomas’s dad, and they both know that! Or, well – Thomas _hopes _Patton knows that.

He’s all by himself in an office room he doesn’t recognize, and for the first time in his entire life, he feels actually alone. He doesn’t feel any different from how he normally does, so it’s not like they’re _missing-_missing, it’s more like they... never existed in the first place?

Thomas is going to drive himself crazy if he keeps thinking about this.

He realizes he has no idea how to actually check the inventory, and he should probably be doing that right now. Even though he really doesn’t want to. Actually, he’s not sure what he wants to do. He wants things to start making sense again, but he has absolutely no idea how to accomplish that.

He _does _know how to hunt around the office for anything vaguely inventory-shaped, though, so that’s what he sets about doing. Within minutes, he’s located a folder that just says ‘INVENTORY’ on the little scribble-on label on the front, and he’s flipping through it. There’s lots of different types of coffee, milk, tea, paper napkins... it all seems pretty in-order for a coffeeshop. No weird shipments of drugs or anything, that is. Not that a coffeeshop owned by _Patton _would be running a secret underground drug ring – actually, he has no idea why he’s thinking about that at all.

Thomas is pretty sure he should probably, you know, _check _to make sure they have all the items listed, or at least make sure all the money adds up, or something like that, but he doesn’t know what specifically he should be doing. And also (although it makes him a bit uneasy to think about it) he doesn’t actually care all that much. He only hesitates for a moment then flips to the last page, and ticks the box to confirm that everything’s in order, before signing off on it. He puts it back on the desk. If it turns out that he’s actually just having some sort of weird crisis and this coffeeshop world is entirely as it should be, he’ll ask Roman or Virgil to redo it later, or do it himself.

He takes a deep breath, composes himself, and pushes open the office door.

“Did the inventory,” he calls out cheerily.

“About _time,_” grouses Virgil from the counter, where he’s just finished stocking up the display fridge with pastries and cupcakes. “Hurry up and get over here; we’re about to open.”

This coffeeshop, as it turns out, has a decent enough number of customers. Thomas recognizes some of them – friends, colleagues, acquaintances – and others just don’t click in his mind at all. It’s a pretty even mix. He mostly hangs back and lets Virgil take the orders and deal with the people. Virgil is very visibly annoyed at being left to do this solo, but he seems to also get that Thomas is having a hell of a day, so he doesn’t complain all that much. Except when he’s doing the latte art, upon which he starts complaining in a low, steady, angry stream, and doesn’t stop until he’s finished. Learning New Things About Ourselves Part Two: Thomas’s anxiety really fucking hates latte art for some strange reason.

Thomas passes Virgil ingredients and heats up cakes and pies and generally sticks to the background, trying to work out what’s going on and what’s up with the whole latte art thing. This works great until Virgil announces, about an hour into it all, that he’s taking a break, and that Thomas should hurry up and get over his fear of interacting with literally anyone in the world, ever, because Roman’s coming but he’s going to be a few minutes and _someone _has to man the register until then.

And so Thomas is left staring at the rows of coffee bags and mugs and ingredients and that _monster _of an espresso machine, with the sudden horrible awareness that he has no idea what half of these things are or how to use any of them.

He doesn’t have time to even start trying to puzzle it all out before Logan comes up to the counter, frowning at the laptop he has balanced in the crook of one arm – hang on a second, _Logan comes up to the counter, _holy shit, thank God and Jesus and every deity from every religion ever conceived by humankind or animals or aliens or bacteria or anything in existence, ever, Logan is here and that means everything is going to start making sense again.

“Logan,” says Thomas, feverish with relief, “Logan, Logan, hello, I love you; impart unto me your deep, ageless, unbiased wisdom. Tell me what’s going on, please, before I start crying.”

Logan looks up from his laptop screen, and blinks at him. “Wisdom? Well, you really ought to be drinking more water than you already do, for the sake of your health. It’ll help rehydrate you if you _do_ start crying, at any rate.” He nods to himself, apparently pleased, and then says, “Double espresso. Extra sugar.”

“Logan, _please,_” Thomas begs. “You’re the last refuge of sensibility in my broken, sad excuse for a psyche. You’re the one sane man in a world of infinitely maddening chaos; you’re probably the most reassuring being in the universe – you’re like that beep that plays on Duolingo whenever I get a word right! That’s _super _reassuring and, like, instant serotonin for some reason! You’re logic personified and nothing makes sense anymore and now _you’re _not making sense! Don’t do this to me!”

“And one of those orange-poppy-seed muffins. Heated, if you could,” Logan adds thoughtfully, and adjusts his glasses, peering over them. “Thomas, is everything all right? You appear faintly distressed.”

“Really? _Do I?_”

Roman materializes into existence behind Thomas – not literally, because he can’t do that here because he’s _a barista in a LGBT coffeeshop – _and slings an arm easily over Thomas’s shoulders. “Good _morning_, lovely Logan! As you can see, Doubting Thomas here is having a bit of a, uh, morning. I can take your order, since it looks like he’s neglected to do that for you.”

“My logic has failed me,” Thomas says numbly, slumping. Roman has to lunge to keep him properly upright. “I’m currently resigning myself to a life of coffee-making and curveballs and not understanding anything, ever, for the rest of eternity.”

“That’s the spirit,” Roman says encouragingly. He glances over at Logan. “Now is probably the time to admit that this is becoming genuinely concerning.”

“I see,” says Logan. “May I suggest taking a day or two off? You didn’t seem quite this upset or, quite frankly,” he shifts his laptop so he can make bunny-ear quotes with one hand and a quirk of an eyebrow, “_‘unhinged’_ when I saw you yesterday. The stress of everything that’s happened recently may be getting to you, in unexpected ways.”

“No can do,” Roman says instantly. “We’re understaffed at the moment. Thomas is the glue that’s holding us together – isn’t that right, Tom, Tom, The Baker’s Son?”

“Hhm,” says Thomas. “Mm. Ngh.”

Logan frowns, deep in thought. He repeats his order at Roman’s prompting, and then says, slowly, “That’s deeply unfortunate. I suppose it can’t be helped, though.”

“Hhrg,” Thomas contributes. His eloquence is unparalleled.

The conversation continues without him. Roman asks something about what Logan’s doing right now. Logan says he’s planning to spend the morning in the coffeeshop, working. Roman wonders what he’s so desperate to finish that he’s willing to do it in a moderately crowded, fairly lively cafe, of all places, as opposed to a library or nerd office or something else.

“I’m making a start on my research essay, as a matter of fact,” Logan says. “Which does not require a library – just an internet connection and caffeinated beverages. Both of which your establish can provide me with.”

“You said that wasn’t due for four months, Specs.” Roman shoots Logan a fondly exasperated look as he rips the order sheet from its pad. “Is this another one of your bursts of overachieving law major mania?”

“The earlier I complete it, the more time I have to devote to my other research projects,” says Logan primly, straightening his tie. “It is basic time management.”

“And that’s a yes,” Roman deadpans. He waves the order slip in Logan’s direction. “Go ahead and take a seat, we’ll get this to you in a jiffy. Hey, do you need to sit down?” This last bit is directed at Thomas.

“I need WikiHow,” says Thomas.

“Hm,” says Logan. “Do you know, I think that’s the first time I’ve ever heard anyone state that out loud, unironically.”

“How To Survive Being Dropped Into An Alternate Reality Where Everything Is Pleasant And Quaint And Nothing Makes Sense Anymore, Ten Steps, With Pictures,” Thomas elaborates, on the verge of tears. “I _know _it doesn’t exist. I also know if it _did _exist every single step would be either infuriatingly vague or horrifyingly detailed or some bizarre mixture of both and it _still _wouldn’t help me deal with anything at all, but I want to read it. I need the comfort of WikiHow’s comedically matter-of-fact ineptness. I need _something. _Maybe it’s not WikiHow but now WikiHow’s literally all I can think about! What the hell is going on? _Why am I thinking about Wikihow?_”

“Mhm, well. I’m just going to serve Logan now, and – oh, look at that, Virgil’s coming back! He can help you out with the rest of the orders, and maybe he can recommend some good breathing exercises, because you really do look like you need them. How is that? Okay?”

“’Kay,” Thomas echoes dully, and takes the opportunity to slam his head down on the front counter and hyperventilate to himself for what ends up being an extraordinary length of time.

“...It’s good to see you, Thomas,” offers Logan. Thomas doesn’t respond because he doesn’t know how to.

After a few seconds, it can probably be safely assumed that Logan walks away, because after that nobody bothers him for a good while. He hears the familiar presence of Virgil moving around behind him. But apart from a faint hum of acknowledgement, Virgil seems to understand that he needs a Moment, or maybe close to a thousand Moments to get a hold of himself.

Eventually, someone else comes up to the counter.

“G’morning, f-word-face!” comes the familiar, albeit slightly bleary, greeting.

“Hey,” Thomas says, face planted firmly on the countertop, where it’s been for the last twenty minutes. Despite this, he can’t help but smile. It’s ridiculously good to hear Joan’s voice, even if he knows that they’re probably just going to be operating on the same skewed logic as everyone else here.

He raises a hand to give them a tired wave, and receives an affectionate hair-ruffle in return, then pushes himself up to a semi-standing position with some struggle. He eyes them for a second. He fumbles for the notebook, because he’s supposed to be taking orders and making coffee and he can only do one of those things with some degree of confidence. “Uh, the usual?”

“I _have _a usual?” Joan says, frowning.

“I was hoping not, because if you do, I have no idea what it is,” Thomas admits. He waggles the pencil. “Gimme that order, I guess.”

Joan also does not seem to think that there’s anything wrong with the fact that Thomas works at a coffeeshop and has no idea what he’s doing. When pressed on this point, Joan points out that Thomas rarely has any idea what he’s doing, ever, in any situation, and a) mild _ouch, _b) they’re right, c) pushing this any further will probably result in more weird looks and suggestions to talk to a therapist that he doesn’t even know the name of, so he lets it drop.

“You don’t want me to make your drink today, trust me,” he tells Joan as he passes the slip of paper over to Virgil.

“Tell me something I don’t know,” Joan says with a roll of their eyes. “You look like you’re about to straight-up fall over and die in the middle of the cafe, dude. Is everything okay?”

“I think it has to be,” Thomas says with no small amount of resignation. “Otherwise, I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with myself.” He takes the proffered takeaway cup from Virgil and slides it across the counter. “There you go, one grande soy black coffee, triple shot. I have no idea how it’s made and I’m afraid to learn. Have a great day, love you, enjoy.”

“Well, that’s ominous,” Joan says. “But I’m late to work, so I can’t help right now. Might want to schedule another appointment with your therapist.”

_More _about that therapist person. Seriously, what’s up with that? Why does everyone keep bringing up a therapist? Thomas doesn’t need a therapist, he’s fine! It’s just that the world has stopped making sense and for the first time in his entire life he’s spiralling without the ability to talk it all out in the form of a goofy, pun-riddled Socratic dialogue with extensions of his personality! As soon as he gets over this little setback he’ll be just _grand_!

“ – congrats about that callback!” Joan is saying, and now they’re waving and walking out the door.

“Callback?” Thomas says, more to himself than anything, and then, “hang on. _Callback?_”

“Oh, yeah, congrats on that,” says Virgil, now making up another customer’s order. “You said it went well, didn’t you?”

“Um,” says Thomas. He is slowly realising how much he hates realism improv. “Y..._es. Yes._ Sure. I did. It did.”

It feels like the pieces ought to be falling together. It feels like he’s been given the vital piece of information that he needs to solve all of this and he should be having a lightbulb moment right now and here, but that isn’t happening.

Thomas stares across the busy landscape of the cafe’s patrons at Logan, who has his mug of coffee at one elbow and is earnestly tap-tap-tapping away at the keyboard of his chunky little laptop. He’s only a few metres away, but Thomas still misses him desperately, like he’d miss his eyes or his lungs or his... well, his brain.

It’s another hour until he can work up the courage and energy to ask Virgil when-slash-if he can go for a break, and when he does, Virgil just shrugs, and says, “yeah, step out whenever. Just as long as we don’t have a million customers because, uh, I might hate you if you leave me to deal with them alone. Just a little bit.”

“And I definitely don’t want you hating me,” Thomas agrees, relieved. There aren’t, as it turns out, very many customers at the moment, so he tugs off his apron and goes to talk to the only person he trusts to have a clear and rational opinion on things. Even if he isn’t expecting very much from him at the moment.

“Logan?” Thomas asks a bit tentatively, hovering at the opposite side of the table.

Logan finishes typing whatever sentence he’s working on, and looks up at Thomas with a content, serene smile. “Salutations, Thomas. You seem to have regained some alertness over the past hour; I’m glad. Did you need something?”

“Yes. No. I – maybe.”

“I see,” says Logan. “You are aware, of course, that you just gave every possible answer to that question?”

“Uh-huh.” Thomas sighs and just about collapses into the chair opposite Logan. “Sorry. I’m not really sure _what _I need. I came here to talk to you about a... thing, but words are hard and I don’t know if I could explain it to you if I tried_._”

“I see,” says Logan. He probably doesn’t. It’s nice of him to pretend that he does, anyway. “In that case, can I interest you in my thesis topic?” He tilts his head to one side. He looks like a curious owl, Thomas thinks, somewhat absurdly. “I’ve been immersing myself in research about one particular obscure piece of French literature. I think you’ll find it rather fascinating – you may have heard of it: _Jet de Sang..._?”

Thomas feels a sudden rush of anger that he manages to push down, because it isn’t everyone’s fault that he doesn’t understand and doesn’t _care _what they’re doing in this strange sideways world he’s woken up in_. _He looks at Logan and tries to calm himself down by thinking _he doesn’t know it’s not his fault_, because Logan of all people definitely doesn’t deserve him flipping out for no reason at all. 

“I should probably get back to work,” he says instead, standing up. “This was... very pointless. I’m sorry that I bothered you.”

Logan looks extremely hurt for a moment, but then he’s back to that serene smile of his, so quick that Thomas could probably dismiss it if he hadn’t been paying attention. “Of course. And no need to apologize, you know that I’m here whenever you need me.”

Thomas wants to apologize a million more times and then maybe shake Logan by the shoulders and ask him what he thinks he’s playing at, but Virgil has just returned from his own break to the counter and something has just occurred to him. So he leaves his logic to whatever sort of intensely specific essay he’s writing, and goes hurrying back.

“When’s – ” Thomas grimaces as he briefly gets his shirtsleeve caught in the dead, prickly-branched mess of the tree right next to the counter. “Okay, what even _is _this?”

“It’s been here for ages,” Virgil says with a yawn. He clicks absently at his phone, which is just behind the coffee machine, checking the time – eleven twenty-six. “Pretty sure it’s a willow tree.”

It looks more like a shrub or a bush or something to Thomas. He succeeds in getting untangled from it. “It’s dead.”

“Or it’s just waiting for its moment,” says Roman, who is carrying a guitar over his shoulder as he heads over to the makeshift stage, like he’s a woodsman heading off into the forest to go gather firewood. But, like, violently. “Like all of us.”

“We’re all just too lazy to get rid of it,” Virgil surmises, as Roman walks off and . “Were you going to ask something?”

“Yeah, where’s Pa – uh.” He hesitates, but there’s nothing for it. “Dad? I had something I needed to ask him, and he’s... not picking up his phone.” Which is to say, Patton isn’t actually in his contacts list, not even under some sort of nickname or alias. He’d already spent a full fifteen minutes checking. Roman’s in there, Virgil’s in there – Logan’s not, for some reason. He has no idea what to make of any of this.

“He’s stopping by tomorrow afternoon, I think,” says Virgil. “Have you checked the schedule?”

Thomas had. He can’t remember seeing Patton’s name marked on it. He remembers his, and Virgil’s, and Roman’s, and probably some other employees whose names he doesn’t know... “Okay, thanks.”

Open mic hour starts shortly after that, and most of the people who go up to belt out a few tunes or fumble about on the provided keyboard are pretty good, although he only recognizes Valerie out of all of them. Roman coaxes and wheedles and pleads and bribes until Virgil caves and does a duet with him, which is mildly amusing but also kind of weird because usually when this sort of thing happens, real life people don’t applaud and chat with them after it’s done.

It’s _weird _to see other people interacting with Roman and Virgil. Like they’ve been photoshopped into a picture so well that it’s practically impossible to tell any editing as been done. Thomas _knows _if he looks hard enough he’ll be able to spot some sort of imperfection or indication that something’s not quite right, but he’s looking and looking and there’s... just nothing. It’s seamless. Flawless. Unnerving.

The rest of the day passes in a blur of coffee orders and people who he knows and people who he doesn’t. He learns, somewhat reluctantly, how to operate the espresso machine, even though he’s really not very good at it.

After everybody’s left and the sign on the front door has been flipped to ‘closed’, they pack up the shop, close everything down, wrap the remaining pastries up and stick them in the storage fridge to keep overnight. The lights are turned off, the chairs are stacked up and the tables pushed aside, the doors are locked, and Roman bids Virgil and Thomas an over-the-top goodnight before unlocking his shiny silver car up and driving off in some inscrutable direction.

Virgil drives Thomas home – _exceedingly_ carefully, he’s such a careful driver it’s ridiculous – and drops him off at his front door with a tired wave and a, “See you tomorrow, don’t oversleep or you’ll have my vengeance to worry about.”

Thomas goes inside. He kicks off his shoes and hangs up his jacket and puts all of his stuff away and makes dinner, then eats it in complete silence.

Then he says, “Sorry, what the _fuck?_” to an empty house.

No answer.

“No, really, what the absolute, genuine, complete total utter _fuck _is going on today?” he says – more like screams, really. It’s so forceful that it almost echoes for a split-second, but then he’s just standing there staring blankly at nothing.

Predictably, there is no response.

He goes to the living room. His familiar living room, with the turned-off television in one corner and the staircase on the other side and the big L-shaped couch with pillows all over it, and just stands there. The lights are off and he can’t be entirely bothered to turn them back on. It feels cold in a way that it usually isn’t.

“What is _up, _everybody?” he says experimentally into the darkness, just to see what it feels like. The answer: wrong. _Super _wrong. Virgil is not on the stairs. Patton is not by the curtains. Roman is not in front of the television and Logan is not in front of the kitchen hallway. They do not rise up no matter how much he pokes and prods at his own mind and consciousness.

Thomas lies down on the couch and tries to feel less like he’s waiting for them to suddenly, miraculously, show up. He switches on Netflix for a distraction, but can’t seem to find anything he hasn’t watched before, and eventually ends up rewatching an ungodly amount of Avatar: The Last Airbender.

Ten o’clock, still nothing. Thomas decides to take Virgil’s advice. Almost mechanically, he heads up to his bedroom, strips, takes a shower, and then gets dressed and brushes his teeth and lies in bed with the covers over him and the lights switched off. He just stares at the ceiling, overwhelmingly aware that sleep is a thing that is most definitely not a thing that has any chance in hell of happening tonight.

He is fully prepared to do this for hours on end. He has a lot to think about. But the universe has other plans.

“Well, this isn’t working,” says a voice, and then all of a sudden the lights are on and Thomas is flinging himself bolt upright, eyes wide at the sight of the figure that’s unexpectedly, abruptly standing at the foot of his bed, arms crossed, tense and furious. Thomas nearly yells his name out loud out of pure shock, but something stops him from doing it. Maybe it’s the expression on his face. Maybe it’s the feeling of dread creeping over him in waves as he realizes what this means – as he realizes what’s really going on.

Thomas takes a deep breath in. Lets it out.

“You know,” he says. “I think we need to talk.”


	6. i love you and everything is beautiful (ii)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Virgil shakes his head. “Jeez, what a weirdo. Who walks around with a handwritten sign stapled to their chest all the time, anyway?”
> 
> “Probably some sort of method actor,” Thomas says with a shrug.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Follow-on from previous chapter. This was genuinely going to be the last part but then I realized how long it was getting and long story I split it up so you guys didn’t have to read like 18k at once. Last part will be up soon, promise.
> 
> Warnings for: unreality, body horror (including eye-related stuff), other visceral intrusive thought-type stuff because Remus (stabbing, suicidal thoughts, and more!), blood, slightly-more-explicit-than-last-time dubious gaslighting.

“Well, good news,” says Virgil as he pushes up the shades and cranks open the windows. “Thomas did _not _sleep in, for once in his miserable life!”

“My god, you actually look rested and revitalized! It’s a mid-summer miracle!” Roman exclaims, clasping his hands dramatically to the sides of his face, and then he breaks out into a genuine grin. “All jokes aside, you do look like you’re feeling a lot better. A lot less mopey-gloomy Lord Byron, a lot more... who’s a cheerful classical writer? As long as I’m rolling with the theme, I mean.”

“There were no cheerful historical writers,” Virgil says. “Actually, I’m pretty sure that anyone who managed to get any sort of sizable novel published pre-twentieth century had _some _amount of clinical depression.”

Thomas huffs lightly. “I don’t sleep in _every _day, c’mon. Now you’re just being mean.”

“No, just most days. And I’d know. Because I have to wake you up, most days. Because you _sleep in._”

Thomas laughs, and throws a towel at Virgil. It’s already shaping up to be a good day, he thinks.

And he’s right – it does end up being an excellent day! It’s peaceful and cheerful and when customers start coming in it gets even better. He exchanges a fist-bump with Joan, nods along to Logan’s offhanded musings about lighting and sound design in unconventional theatre (even though he doesn’t really care all that much, it’s still nice to see Logan invested in things, he gets so radiantly excited over stuff like this), tries to puzzle out where in Roman’s elaborate, chaotic power-organizing system that one really specific coffee mix is kept. Wonders if he should call his dad. They haven’t talked for ages, and it’d be nice if they could go out and get dinner or something.

He pours milk into a mug and mixes in some of that coffee powder that he’s only just managed to find because it had been stuffed underneath the sink and pinned under a box labelled ‘THINGS YOU’D RATHER FORGET’ that he’d left where it was. With one hand, he sticks the mug under the frother and sets it to run. With the other, he pulls out his phone, intending to text his dad with a few cat emojis or a picture of some of the new puns he and Roman had dreamt up for the menu.

But, to his surprise, Thomas finds that he can’t see his contact information anywhere. He checks the list twice, scrolling top-to-bottom and scanning it with laser-sharp focus, but _nothing _and also it’s a lot shorter than he remembers. He tries to remember what the number is – surely he hasn’t forgotten his own dad’s phone number, that’s... that’s a downright terrible thing for him to do, but, no. It’s gone.

“Yo, Thomas, if you could get a bunch of chocolate croissants from the supply room? We’re nearly out,” says Virgil, eyeing up the display cabinet consideringly.

“Sure,” Thomas says, and decides to look up the number when he gets home that night. He pockets his phone, pulls the mug back from the frother, then frowns and nods approvingly at it before passing it off to Virgil. “This was for the guy in the sunglasses.”

“The one who keeps complaining about this not being Starbucks? Gotcha.” Virgil shakes his head. “Jeez, what a weirdo. Who walks around with a handwritten sign stapled to their chest all the time, anyway?”

“Probably some sort of method actor,” Thomas says with a shrug.

He slides the carton of milk back into the fridge, and walks into the supply room. The supply room is an endless foggy graveyard that stretches out further than the eye can see. The cold air seeps into Thomas’s bones in a way that nothing else ever has before. Scattered all throughout the dark, loamy soil are thousands of smashed and cracked gravestones bearing fragments of names. All of the names are ‘Thomas Sanders’.

...Thomas walks out of the supply room, and tells Virgil they’re out of croissants.

“Jeez,” Virgil says. “Already? We’re going to have to tell Pat to restock.”

“I’ll put a note in the office,” Thomas says. “When’s he coming by, anyway?”

“Tomorrow afternoon, I think.”

“Okay, thanks.” Thomas’s sleeve gets caught on the willow tree again, and he yelps, and then laughs, ducking his head as he tries to unentangle himself. He’s caught himself on it _bad _this time. “_Ergh, _this tree – seriously, we need to get rid of it, it’s terrible. Why do we even still have it?”

“Princey’s still holding out hope it’ll spring back to life magically,” Virgil deadpans.

“Can you get me a pair of scissors?” Thomas asks, preoccupied with the tree’s gnarled branches, which seem to have a near-supernatural hold on the fabric of his t-shirt. “There’s – okay, never mind.” He’s no longer attached to the tree, but his shirt is now ripped. And aw man, that was one of his favorites too. “Oh well. Time to finally learn how to sew, I guess.”

“Nice optimistic attitude today, I see,” Virgil says.

Thomas shrugs. “Well, yeah. It’s one of my key defining characteristics.” He snags a new order slip from where it’s tucked under the counter bar, and scans it. “Let’s get going. Don’t want to keep the customers waiting.”

Dodie comes in later that afternoon, and Thomas ends up taking a break from serving coffee to go up to the stage and jam with her for a bit. It’s beautiful in its unexpectedness, and the best bit about working in a coffeeshop is _free hot drinks. _Honey and hot water work wonders for your singing voice, Thomas swears by it unconditionally. Or just chugging honey straight for the bottle will work, in a pinch, but Virgil tends to get pretty judgy about that and complains about getting stickiness everywhere. So the more dignified route it is.

Approximately ten songs and two mugs of honey-water later, and Roman’s calling to Thomas to get back to the counter and help out, and with a laugh and a quick apology he acquiesces.

When he looks back, a short while later, Dodie is attempting to convince Logan to come up and at least rap monotonally along with her, if nothing else, but Logan just waves her off, citing his preoccupation with his thesis or whatever he’s working on as the reason. Thomas has a feeling that there’s more to it than that, but there’s a sudden influx of new customers and by the time he _does _have another chance to check in, closing time has rolled around and both of them are gone.

Cleanup is quick and easy, as usual.

“Love you!” Roman calls at him as he locks up the shop from the inside, blowing a casual little kiss in his direction.

Thomas beams back at him, and mimes catching it and holding it close to his heart. “Aw, love you too!”

“Are you going to stand around throwing confessions of love back and forth with Roman like baseballs, or are you going to get in so we can _go home_?” yells Virgil from his beat-up purple car, although he _is_ smiling.

“And just for that, you aren’t getting one,” Roman shouts across. “Go home loveless and alone, you cruel contentment-crusher; Thomas is all mine! We’ll be staying here, _forever!_”

“Oh no, whatever shall I do,” Thomas says with a laugh, falling back against the shop windows in a dramatic little swoon. “Virgil, help, this coffeeshop’s never going to let me go!”

Virgil blares the horn twice, apparently unimpressed. “You know what else is never going to let you go? The medical bills from the mugging that’s going to take place after I leave you here, alone, in the dark. Are you going to stop goofing around, or are we getting out of here?”

Thomas makes a show of struggling and staggering over to the car, as if it’s a physical effort to do so. When he gets it, Virgil punches him lightly on the arm, and he swats back at him, and there’s a brief scuffle for the aux chord that Thomas does in fact win.

He blasts showtunes all the way home, but honestly Virgil doesn’t seem to mind all that much.

*

“Espresso machine’s broken again,” announces Virgil early the next morning, whacking the appliance with the back of his hand. “And I have some _great _news for the two of you – I’m not fixing it today! That’s down to you guys.”

“Bags not,” mutter Thomas and Roman in haunting chorus, and then stick their tongues out at each other.

“Flip for it?” Roman says, holding up a gleaming nickel.

“You’re on,” says Thomas, and watches as Roman performs a cinematically-perfect coin flip. End over end through the air, caught in one hand, slapped onto the back of the other.

Heads. Roman grins over at Thomas, half apologetic and half smug.

“Aw jeez, I’ve got to stop making dumb bets over things that don’t matter with you,” Thomas sighs, mock-annoyed. “You’re _always _right.”

“That I am,” says Roman with a wink. “Get to it!”

Fixing the espresso machine isn’t exactly _fun _but it’s not the most terrible job in the world. And besides, Virgil is setting up the morning shop playlist and smiling to himself over music choices, and Roman is now sweeping the floor and twirling around dramatically with the broom like its his dance partner, and the rainbow decals in the front windows are catching the sunlight and draping the tables and floor in little gay shadows, so nothing can really be properly wrong. It’s going to be good day, Thomas can just feel it.

Thomas drags a chair over to perch on while he works, and pries off the shiny chrome cover that hides all the internal workings of the machine. He sets it to one side, and starts trying to figure out what’s gone wrong with it this time. He pokes and prods at the tubes and wires, somewhat tentatively. He’s not an expert, but he thinks that there might be something jamming it up.

He reaches into the tube-y wire-y depths and fumbles around for a minute or two, cursing as his hand gets grazed by something rough and sharp. He grabs it, tugs it out, weighs it in one hand. Considers it.

“I think I got it,” he reports to the other two. “Looks like there was a brick jamming up the milk valve.”

Virgil lets out a noise of sympathetic commiseration. “God, I hate it when that happens.”

Thomas turns the brick over thoughtfully, and sees that there’s a short message scribbled onto the smoother side of it. _You’re only avoiding the real problem, _it says.

“Hey, what do I do with this?” he asks.

“We can use it as a doorstop, maybe?” Virgil says, messing with his fringe so it falls over his eyes in the moodiest possible way. “Paint it rainbow and it’ll fit right in.”

Thomas shrugs and goes over to prop it up next to the coffeeshop’s front door. When he gets back, he flicks the espresso machine’s on-switch, but it’s still not working. Still jammed, apparently. He goes searching for the source of it once more. This time, he unearths a dusty old book entitled ‘Can’t You See That This Is Entirely’ by some author named Too Perfect, tucked right up next to the far-left side of the machine.

“Weird name, huh?” Thomas says, showing Roman.

“Probably Belgian,” Roman says.

Into the trash can it goes. The espresso machine remains stubbornly non-functional, so it’s back into the wirings to find more blockages.

Pressing down on top of the pressure valve is an old-fashioned Nokia 3301. Thomas grins, lets out a delighted little, “_aha!_” and tugs it out. There’s a message flashing on the screen, which Thomas reads absently – ‘_YOU DON’T EVEN KNOW HOW TO FIX A COFFEE MACHINE WHAT ARE YOU EVEN DOING’_ – before he says, “hey, Virge, aren’t these things supposed to be indestructible?”

Virgil brightens. “Allegedly. Is that a challenge?”

Thomas tosses the phone over to him without looking, and says, “Go wild, bud.” And then frowns. The machine still isn’t turning on. He sticks his hand into it again, and pulls out a steaming cup of coffee very carefully, so as not to spill any of the hot liquid inside. The mug has a smiling caricature of the sun (inexplicably wearing sunglasses) on one side, with the cartoony, round-lettered legend proclaiming ‘_This is an absolute waste of time!_’ with_ ‘(go see a real therapist!)’ _in smaller text, just beneath it.

“Well, this explains it,” Thomas says, and frowns at the others. “Guys, come on – who left this here? You _know _it doesn’t work as well when there’s hot beverages inside it. It clogs up the wires or something.”

“Might’ve been Patton,” Roman says. “Ask him about it tomorrow, when he stops by?”

“Will do,” says Thomas. “Well, at least this is probably the last of them.”

But no, apparently this isn’t it either. There’s more things inside the machine, and Thomas dutifully keeps pulling them out. A baseball ball with ‘THOMAS ARE YOU EVEN READING THIS’, meticulously picked out in the stitching, repeated over and over again. A scribbled, hand-written note that reads, ‘_why must you be like this._’ You would _think _that with the removal of them, the espresso machine would spark back into life, but it still stubbornly refuses to work.

“Yeah, I’m stumped,” Thomas sighs eventually, sitting back. “Roman? I know we flipped for it and everything, but... I’ve got no clue, seriously.”

“Fine, _fine, _let me see.” Roman comes over. He pokes Thomas until he scoots sideways in the chair so Roman can perch awkwardly on half of it, and then pokes around for a bit, pushing wires and tubes this way and that. “Ah, there we are – I see the issue. See, sometimes you actually just need to ignore it for a few seconds...” He reaches over, pulls the chrome plating of the machine’s front, and slips it back into place. He bangs on it twice for good measure, pauses and waits, and then flicks the on-switch. The lights on the side come on, and it starts cheerfully emitting puffs of steamy vapor. “...and the problem just goes away!”

“Good for you. I’m going out back to try to crush this ancient brick of a phone with the weight all my repressed anger at the customers and the world as a whole, and also this brick that Thomas found in the coffee machine,” says Virgil cheerfully, waving the brick in question. “Either of you want to come with?”

“Sure,” says Thomas, tossing the crumpled note and the ball into the trash. “We’ve got, like, ten minutes ‘til we open? Plenty of time to kill.”

“Bet you anything you can’t crack it before then,” Roman says, propping up the broom against the wall behind the counter.

“I’ll do it in five,” declares Virgil, eyes gleaming.

And they all head out to the back of the coffeeshop to watch Virgil wreak havoc on an innocent phone, which is the best way to start your morning no matter who you are or what your job is. He does not, in fact, manage to crack the Nokia open. Neither does Roman, who had also decided to take a few decent swings at it. By the time they head back inside to open up for the customers, he and Virgil are scowling at the stubbornly untouched phone, still flashing its message, and Thomas is laughing at both of them.

It's another good day. Music and coffee and Logan stops by close to lunchtime – apparently he wants to discuss something, but Thomas has to wave him off and tell him no, another time, because today they’re getting the patrons of the coffeeshop to help repaint the front windows with designs of their choice. And that’s something Thomas and Roman are overseeing, and it’s a pretty involved job! There are a _lot _of rainbow paint splatters by the end of it all, but the front windows now look perfect, maybe even better than they did before.

By the time they close up again, Thomas has glitter all through his hair (and where did that even come from? They hadn’t been working with glitter in the first place), Roman is complaining about his perfect white shirt being ruined with paint that’s definitely not going to wash out, and Virgil has a smudge of purple across his nose and cheeks that nobody has mentioned to him yet. They’re all sweaty and still giggling over a long string of extremely specific in-jokes that’ll all be undoubtedly forgotten by tomorrow.

Thomas’s car still isn’t fixed. According to the repair garage, it’s going to be at least a week before he’s good to pick it up, maybe more – so Virgil is still ferrying him back and forth between home and the shop. Which is awesome, because there’s nothing better than arguing over which playlist to put on during shared commutes to _really _solidify a friendship, and also expand your music tastes.

Although all the songs that Virgil plays _are _songs that Thomas already knows, so – maybe they’ll try for something new tomorrow.

“Love ya, Virge,” Thomas says as Virgil pulls up outside of his house. He bumps shoulders with his friend briefly, before hopping out of the car, and skipping a few steps backwards to wave as he heads up the short pathway into his house.

“I love you too, you absolute _nerd,_” Virgil calls after him with an audible roll of the eyes and what seems to be a carefully calculated huff to let Thomas know just how stupid he thinks the whole ‘showing affection by actually talking about your feelings’ thing is. Like he couldn’t care less, and is just humouring him about it. But Thomas knows better. He knows that Virgil has a big wonderful heart under all those layers of eyeshadow and resigned depression and long-suffering attitude, and he loves Thomas just as much as Thomas loves him.

They’ve been friends for... well, _ages! _Since primary school. Probably. Maybe. Doesn’t matter. Thomas would definitely die for Virgil, although of course that’d never happen. Death isn’t something that he has to worry about. There’s not many things at all that he has to worry about. Life is good.

Thomas goes into his house, flicking on the lights, and heads off to make dinner – humming all the while. He steadfastly ignores the way the microwave keeps beeping at him like it’s trying to tell him something, and tunes out the infrequent knocking on the door. Neither of those things are anything he has to worry about. Worrying about things isn’t a thing he _does. _Not now, not ever. Not about serious things, anyway.

Dinner, rewatching shows he’s watched a hundred times before, bed. Ignore the insistent tapping on the windows, wait for whatever it is to go away.

Life is good.

*

Virgil is still of the opinion that doing latte art sucks. Thomas has the strong suspicion that he actually just doesn’t think he’s very good at it, and is therefore afraid to try just in case he messes it up really badly. Which – not entirely rational but he can still respect that somewhat. And Thomas does enjoy doing the little drizzles and designs, so he’s more than happy for Virgil to foist the task off onto him.

He’s in the middle of putting the finishing touches on a abstract milk-drizzle doodle of a cup of coffee (meta-art, the best kind) when the world seems to snap into a weird sort of pointed, piercing focus, causing him to put the cup down so quickly he nearly spills it.

It’s not like Thomas is suddenly becoming aware of reality, because reality doesn’t have this high a level of definition. _Nothing _does. The shadows are clear-cut and sharp and the colors, where they still exist, are luridly bright. But mostly it’s just monochrome. And the leering face of the customer in front of him, whose eyes are dark and whose grin is eerily pointed around the edges – it’s sharper and better-defined than anything else. His dark clothes seem to shine in the too-bright lights, green and black and sparkling like a skyful of wrong stars in a puddle of drainage water.

He doesn’t say anything, just keeps grinning, and Thomas thinks;_ razor blade dragging across eyeballs spilling vitreous fluid everywhere, soak yourself in bleach until your skin is just as white and ragged as your bones are, pick up that knife and go and gut Joan from behind they’ll never see it coming. _He twitches and can’t help the tiny little noise of disgusted horror he makes and the way his entire being seems to cringe to get away from the thought of it all.

The man’s eyes seem to darken even further with gleeful schadenfreude.

“Order, please?” Virgil says in an exhausted customer-service voice when neither of them speak up for a very long time.

“Go away,” Thomas says, his voice very small.

“No can do, Doubting Thomathy,” says the man, with relish. “I think this is something you _need _to hear. What are you going to do? Get rid of me?”

“Come on, are you going to order something, or are you just gonna stand there?” Virgil huffs, tapping angrily at his notepad with a pencil. “We’ve got other customers too, don’t be a dick about it.”

Thomas tears his eyes away from the man’s face for a split second and sees that there’s a line of people stretching out endlessly behind the green-and-black-drenched man. Past the confines of the walls of the coffeeshop. He blinks and then it’s just four people and then blinks again and there’s no-one at all, and Virgil’s saying, “ – are you just gonna stand there? It’s not like we have any customers, but you don’t need to be a dick about it.”

“I don’t feel so great,” Thomas says faintly. Virgil is either ignoring him or just doesn’t hear him. Reality sharpens again. Now it’s just Thomas and the man and they’re so _real _that tears are springing to Thomas’s eyes as he tries to comprehend what’s going on.

“Oh, trust me, you’re about to feel even _worse_,” says the man. It is _definitely _a threat, and yet Virgil doesn’t seem to react to it at all. He turns that horrible grin away from Thomas and onto Virgil. “I need saliva, as much as you can find – gimme a large and froth it up as much as you can and throw in a nice splash of milk too so it’s milk and spit and let it _sit _and _rot _until it’s wet and sloppy and rotting in your mouth the moment you take a swallow. And forget the cup, just make it a stomach, extra large, and the acid’s already there so no need to add _that. _It’s warm and slippery and you take a sip and it squishes and squashes around like a water balloon and do you know what, I think it might just burst at any second, and now _that’s _going to be a fun cleanup job, hmm? Who do you think’s going to have to deal with that?”

Thomas catches himself against the counter, spots blurring his vision. He tries not to gag and fails miserably.

“Cool,” says Virgil dispassionately, noting it all down. “Did you want sugar with that?”

His head is reeling and static is crawling under his skin like ants. Maybe there’s actually ants under his skin. He wouldn’t be surprised at this point.

“Yeah, sugar sounds great,” the man says. “Dump in the entire pot while you’re at it.”

Virgil mixes up the man’s drink, who does not stop smiling _once. _It’s the smile of someone that very much knows something that everyone else does not, and is revelling in it. It’s also the smile of someone who’s so ridiculously gloriously aware of how uncomfortable he’s making Thomas, and also is revelling in _that._

“That’ll be five dollars fifty,” Virgil says.

“How about you go stick your head into a nest of angry wasps and choke on them?” the man says.

Virgil nods as if this is completely reasonable, and slides the drink across the counter. It’s the color of dirty dishwater and the consistency of mud. The man snatches up the mug, and gives Thomas a wicked little conspiratorial wink. And then he promptly smashes it on the counter. The scalding whatever-it-is goes splashing everywhere – drenching Thomas and Virgil head-to-toe, slopping messily to the floor and all over the espresso machine and the smell is _horrible, _like a hundred rotting trash heaps.

Thomas yells out, clawing at his face in complete reflexive agonized panic. The skin feels like it’s being melted off, dripping down the bones and muscles like wax. Pain lights up his mind with blinding intensity, and in some distant part of his brain, he feels bad for everyone else in the coffeeshop who have to hear and watch this.

But then the pain fades to nothing in less than a second, and Thomas is so surprised he stops screaming on the spot. The man is gone, and the weird sharpness of everything has faded back to its regular normal resolution. And although the shattered porcelain and disgusting goopy liquid remains (and it’s _all over the place_), it’s no longer scalding-hot. And nobody appears to be aware that anything out of the ordinary has taken place.

Virgil, still covered in quickly-drying gunk, is hunting for a spare rag and muttering about rude customers. His angry annoyed monologue, however, seems to be more about stingy tipping than whatever the fuck just happened.

Thomas chances a glance towards the tip jar. The man appears to have left an entire severed hand in it.

“I’m,” he says, and then, “I’ll – um. This is probably a health code violation, isn’t it?”

Virgil lets out a noncommittal grunt, then, “Yeah, probably. Looked like the sort of guy who doesn’t wash his hands. Yo, Princey!” He kicks at the office door without looking.

After a few seconds, Roman pops his head out. “I heard my name – did you need something, Oscar the Slouch?”

Virgil pulls a face at the nickname, and then says, “How do we disinfect the tip jar? I feel like we should’ve been doing this earlier, customers are _gross._”

“Dump hand sanitizer in it?” Roman suggests, looking politely puzzled.

“I’m pretty sure that’ll just end up dissolving the paper money,” Virgil starts.

Thomas doesn’t wait for them to continue with this. He picks up the tip jar, hand included, and says, “I’ll just... go dump this out the back, shall I?”

Virgil and Roman are now fully engaged in an intense debate regarding how much hand sanitizer it would take to dissolve one hundred dollar’s worth of one-buck notes, and aren’t listening to him at all.

“Cool,” says Thomas, and turns to leave. As Virgil waves Logan over to give his input on the matter, Thomas heads through the door that leads to the empty lot out back, right between the storage room and office doors, and shuts it behind him.

The red, stormy sky and distant fractured mountains beyond the endless wasteland are soothingly familiar. He tilts his head back, closes his eyes and breathes in the sweet smell of ashes, neglect and decay. And when he thinks he’s calm enough, he grabs the severed hand out of the tip jar by the very ends of his fingers, careful not to touch any more of it than he absolutely has to. It’s not quite as bad as he thought it’d be. Which is to say, it’s actually really terrible, but at least all the blood is dried and doesn’t get on him very much.

He’s about to prise open one of the dumpster lids and drop it in there and hope no police come looking for dismembered body parts, but then he realizes that the hand’s actually holding something. Its thumb and index finger have got a death grip on a tiny slip of card with neat print on one side.

Thomas wiggles the card out, and throws the hand away, wincing as it lands with a loud _clang _at the bottom of the nearest dumpster. He wipes his own hand on his apron, and holds the slip of card up so he can see what it says. The faint radiation of the sun that fluctuates and glows angrily at them at all hours of the day and night provides a good enough light source to make it easy.

_The Dark Side,_ it says, simple and concise. It gives an address that Thomas recognizes as being right across the street from their coffeeshop.

There are no further details.

Thomas frowns at it, then at the tip jar, and goes back inside. There is a small line forming at the counter that nobody whatsoever is serving, because Roman and Virgil and Logan are still deeply engaged in conversation. It’s hard to tell what it’s about, because they seem to have moved on from the whole dissolving thing. They’re now talking about... Thomas doesn’t know what they’re talking about.

“ – on the neck,” Roman is saying, “because _eyelid _is just absurd and you’re clearly just making fun of me, and thighs are the coward’s option, come on, it’s only reasonable-!”

“Because you’d be the pinnacle of reasonableness,” Virgil says, folding his arms and leaning back against the counter. “Reasonality. Reasonable-ality?”

“Rationality,” Logan corrects absently, and catches sight of Thomas. “Ah, Thomas! Would you care to hear what I’ve got to say about the history and development of the absurdist genre? I’ve had some thoughts about it for a while now, and it could be quite beneficial to hear.”

“No, I’ve – ” Thomas makes a vague, directionless gesture with one hand. “There’s all these customers, and I have to... I’ve got to... there’s...” He struggles, trying to remember. The small business card is still clutched in his hand. Why is he hanging onto it? “Inventory! I haven’t done the inventory yet. Maybe later, Lo.”

“I really think you’ll want to hear this,” Logan says, voice abruptly becoming sharply intense. His eyes narrow.

Thomas is suddenly very afraid and he doesn’t know quite why. Logan isn’t talking about anything important. He doesn’t even look that threatening. Thomas is afraid. The card marked _DARK SIDE _cuts into his palm like a thin, incriminating knife. Thomas is afraid. There are so many customers and all of them are eerily familiar and the espresso machine makes no sense whatsoever.

“Lunch break!” he blurts, and _runs._

Out through the front of the shop, crashing through the double-doors. The bell over the entrance jingles furiously. Thomas makes to dash across the road, and nearly gets hit by a speeding car – only managing to stop himself just in time as it screeches and squeals away, horn blaring off as it careens into the distant darkness. He forces himself to look both ways for any more oncoming unexpected traffic, and jogs across at less of a panicked pace. He can’t help continuously glancing over his shoulder as he does. Nobody’s following him, but there’s that terrible constant feeling of being watched that he’s unable to shake.

He nearly trips on the curb and falls flat on his face as he steps up to the sidewalk. And then it nearly happens again with a stack of untouched newspapers, and Thomas tries to pay closer attention to where he’s stepping as he approaches the other coffeeshop.

The sign above it reads _The Dark Side_ in big bold white-on-black lettering. The windows are tinted so it’s difficult to really see what’s inside, and it doesn’t look like there’s very many customers, even though the lights are clearly on. He tries cupping his hands over the glass windows and peering through for a full few minutes (still with that weird feeling of being watched from behind) before admitting defeat and going to the door. He has to take a deep breath to steel himself for... whatever this is before he can actually work up the nerve to push it open.

The decor is very... dark. The place lives up to its name, at least. It’s all black wallpaper and yellow drapery and suspicious green stains and shadowy, ominous lighting. The chandelier is even flickering sporadically, as if to really drive the point home.

The floorplan looks surprisingly like that of Sanders’ Sides, actually. The tables are all in the right places, although no customers means all the chairs are pushed in. But also there’s dirty plates and mugs and cups all over them, and no stage area, and although there’s still LGBT posters and paintings on the walls it’s less _Love, Simon _and more _Jennifer’s Body, _and, _also._ There’s the small matter of the signs.

Actually, the signs are the thing that catch Thomas’s attention from the moment he walks in. Because they’re _everywhere. _On tables, cups, floorboards, light fixtures... basically anything that has a name has a sign. And its name written on the sign, in the same neat block lettering as the sign above the coffeeshop. It looks like someone went _extremely_ to town with a dictionary and a labelmaker on the entire cafe.

“My goodness. It certainly took you long enough,” says a voice.

Thomas gasps and starts and looks over to the source of it.

There is a man sitting on the surface of this coffeeshop’s front counter with a wry, thin grin that doesn’t reach his eyes. His face is half scales and half smooth unblemished skin, and one of those eyes of his is a strange, milky yellow, but that’s not all that weird. Thomas’s dad is a frog sometimes, so he’s not going to judge.

The sign hanging from one arm reads ‘SNAKE’_. _There is also one on his hat that just says ‘HAT’, but that’s even more obvious_. _

“Tell me, how is this coffeeshop fantasy of your treating you so far?” he says.

“Uh,” says Thomas, not quite sure how to respond to that. He holds up the crumpled business card tentatively. “I... got your card?”

“I can see that,” says the snake-man.

There’s something familiar about him, and the familiarity is right on the tip of his tongue, but the second Thomas tries to grasp for it properly it slips away like a sandcastle at high tide. This man scares him for some reason, but buried within that fear is a weird sort of relief. It’s the face. Something about the face. The eyes, the curving of the cheekbones.

He should probably ask something about that. But there’s something else that’s bugging him a lot more.

“The signs,” he says. “They’re really something. But – why...?”

“Oh,” says the man, and sighs. “Yes. Those. I really am enjoying them. They add a _lot _to the place. Truly delightful and not at all inconvenient.”

“It’s all very...” Thomas struggles for a moment.

“The word you’re looking for is probably ‘Brechtian’.”

“Is it?”

“Absolutely. It’s all very on-the-nose, invoking an audience’s reflective detachment. Complete transparency all around. I _love _unnecessary labels.” He jangles around the tip jar with one hand, _clink-clink-click._ There’s a sign that says ‘CAPITALISM’ on it. At least it doesn’t have a severed hand in it, thank god for small mercies. “Penny for your thoughts?”

“I’m starting to think you might be the most sarcastic person I’ve ever met,” says Thomas.

“Excellent, that means I’m winning. Catch.”

A single coin goes sailing through the air towards him, flipping end over end. Thomas flails, startled, but just barely manages to catch it. He unfolds his fingers, and it’s heads-side-up, and when he turns over he sees that there’s a tiny perfectly-centred label on the back that says ‘PENNY (SHINY)’.

“Sorry, um,” he says, dropping the labelled coin into his pocket, at a loss for anything else to do with it. “Do I...? I feel like I should know your name. Or, like, literally anything about you apart from, uh...” He gestures vaguely at the sign that says ‘SNAKE’. “What you look like.”

There is a short silence. Thomas feels oddly like he’s being X-rayed.

“Janus,” says the man softly. The cool, chilly amusement seems to melt away as he says it. He almost looks vulnerable, for whatever reason. He clasps two yellow-gloved hands together. Tight and solemn. “My name is Janus.”

“Janus,” says Thomas carefully. It feels... strange, but right. “Okay. Hi, Janus.”

“Try not to forget that again, if you could,” Janus adds, with a downwards twist to his lips. “Telling you was enough of a chore the first time.”

The door behind the counter opens, and Thomas catches the faintest flash of orange from whatever’s behind it, before the black-and-green man from earlier steps out, beaming widely, shutting it behind him with a flourish. “Well, well, well, look at _that!_”

Janus turns, twisting sideways to look at him. As he does, Thomas catches a glimpse of the sign hanging off his back, which simply says ‘LIAR’. “Good of you to turn up, Remus.”

This... is also a name that feels unquestionably _right. _It slots into his head like a charging cable plugging into his phone and he swears he can hear the pleasant little _beep _of connection. “You’re the guy who dumped an entire human hand into the tip jar,” he says.

Remus just grins at him. “I’ll have you know a good hand is worth _thousands, _no – millions, if you get the right dark-web black market,” he says and leaps neatly over the counter to come and stalk up to him so they’re nose-to-nose and uncomfortably close. The sign he’s most prominently wearing says ‘BITCH’, but it’s clearly handwritten. “And that was an _exceptional _hand; I grew it myself. You should be thanking me!”

“Thanks,” says Thomas weakly, unable to stop himself from thinking about crushing all the tablet medication and medicine he owns into a fine, fine powder and pouring it into a glass of wine and chugging it all down in one swallow. He looks over at Janus. “Who... who...?”

“Oh, _right,_” says Janus, and makes a grand gesture in Remus’s direction. “Thomas, the Duke. Remus...”

“_Yes_, Janny Deceito, I know who he is.” Remus is now back behind the counter, and he’s tugging out a thermos from beneath the countertop. “I could pretend to not know him, but – I mean, what good would that do? It’s no fun confusing someone who’s already confused.” He unscrew the thermos and lets out a pleased little sigh of delight, before snapping his fingers in some strange parody of ‘remembering to be a polite host’ and offering it out to Thomas. It’s white-grey and jelly-like, slopping over the edges of the mug. It’s not milk. The smell is kind of unmistakable, though. And it’s labelled very clearly, in case he couldn’t work it out from other context clues. “Cold drink?”

“Hard pass,” says Thomas, trying not to gag.

“Suit yourself,” shrugs Remus, and tosses it back in one quick gulp. Thomas has to turn away, especially when he makes an immeasurably pleased noise and an exaggerated slurping sound as he licks his lips.

He looks at Janus instead, because Janus isn’t making questionable beverage choices. “Okay, seriously – why am I here? Not that meeting you two isn’t... _interesting_, but, this is kind of...” He gestures vaguely. “...I don’t like this place.”

“You’re here because you want to be, _duh,_” says Remus, now scraping at the inside of the thermos with grimy fingers. “It’s not like we could make you come across the road, you had to do that all by yourself. You came because there was something off but you didn’t know what. It’s like...” He sticks his fingers in his mouth, and slurps. It’s an extremely sexual sort of slurp. “Mm, _good _– it’s like, you know when you’ve got a healing wound? And you know it hurts because _ow!_ But you can’t _feel_ it hurting, not properly. Or maybe you do feel it hurting, but you’re thinking, hey, that isn’t hurting as much as it should, what’s up with that? And obviously, the only thing to do is _stab _it until you can feel it hurting a million times more than it already did! And then _bam_, _gush, slosh _all over the ground – you’re bleeding! It’s everywhere!” He gestures wildly with a sticky, body fluid-covered finger, grinning. “And long story short, that’s how you’re gonna die!”

“Oh,” says Thomas. “I kind of thought you were going somewhere with that.”

“Mm, yes. Common mistake,” says Janus. “Now, if you wouldn’t mind giving me your phone...?”

Thomas startles. “My-? Why do you need my phone?”

“I’m planning to steal all of your personal information and sell it to third parties for an extravagant amount of money,” Janus says. “_Obviously._”

“Joke’s on you, Apple does that anyway,” Remus pipes up, and does jazz hands. “Invasion of privacy! We live in a literal dystopia, how about that!”

“Yes, yes, society is terrible – now is the _ideal _time to discuss that, of course.” Janus is wiggling the fingers of one gloved hand expectantly in Thomas’s direction. The gloved hand has a little tag dangling from one finger that says ‘GLOVE (YELLOW)’. “Are you going to give me your phone or not?”

Thomas reluctantly tugs out his phone from his jeans pockets – noting, as he does, that it now has a little label on it reading ‘THOMAS’S PHONE’. “Please don’t break it,” he requests with a nervous little chew of his bottom lip.

Janus gives him a surprisingly goofy little smirk, wiggling his eyebrows dramatically. Thomas guesses that means he’s not going to unless doing so will end up being really funny, and he can’t think of a situation where destroying his phone is going to be a hilarious punchline, so it’s probably safe. He hands it over.

He doesn’t unlock it, but apparently that’s not a problem. Janus just holds it out to Remus, and Remus presses his thumb to the base of the screen with a flourish, and... it unlocks, instantly? And also now there’s a smear of sticky brown coagulation where his thumb had contacted it, but Thomas doesn’t want to think about that.

Instead, he watches as Janus types furiously into the phone. He hasn’t bothered to take off his gloves, but that doesn’t seem to be a problem, for whatever reason. After a minute, he nods and hands it back to Thomas. When he checks, he sees that there’s one new entry in his contacts list. All it has is Janus’s name and a phone number his eyes gloss over no matter how hard he tries to focus on it.

“I’m sure you must be getting back to this glorious little fantasy you, yourself, and you have got brewing up,” Janus says, setting Thomas’s heart racing and an unhappy chill creeping over his skin, even though he doesn’t quite know why, “and I would _hate _to keep you from doing so, but – if you ever need me, all you have to do is call.”

“Right,” says Thomas, frightened and suspicious. “I’ll... keep that in mind. Is that all you wanted to give me?”

“I suppose it must be,” says Janus. “But I rather thought you’d have questions at this point. I thought I might as well flip the script around and try to answer a few for once. But, no? Nothing springs to mind?”

“Uh, no,” says Thomas, blinking. “Why would I have questions?”

Janus looks sad. Overwhelmingly, exhaustingly sad; the sort of sad that makes Thomas want to start crying in sympathy. “I see,” is all he says. “In that case, have a _wonderful _day, Thomas. And thank you ever so much for coming.”

Thomas casts one last look around the coffeeshop – dim lights, signs everywhere, Remus now pulling every bottle and box out from underneath the counter as he sets about making what appears to be the world’s most horrifying caffeinated cocktail, Janus with his shoulders slumped and his head bowed – and then nods. “Nice to meet you, Janus,” he says. “See you around, I guess?”

“See you around,” Janus echoes, as Thomas heads back through the wreckage and chaos of the shop towards the front double-doors. He pushes them open, and the ash of the air outside is warm on his face.

“Just remember – I can’t help you if you don’t want to help yourself,” Janus calls after him, and then the door shuts behind Thomas and he’s standing on the street and he’s alone once more.


	7. i love you and everything is beautiful (iii)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Remus,” he says, unsurprised. “Did... are you... what is this place meant to be?”
> 
> “Oh, probably hell,” Remus says with a shrug. “You know how it is.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Follow-on from (and conclusion to) the previous two chapters.
> 
> Warnings for: unreality, body horror, other visceral intrusive thought-type stuff because Remus (stabbing, suicide), _so_ much blood, choking/drowning, more of that dubious gaslighting. Also suicidal thoughts and self-loathing. And one particular character acting like a bit of a Jerk, but that's not because he's 'unsympathetic' it's just because he's sad and having a hard time and sometimes People Lash Out. okay i will stop talking here. enjoy (??)

Stepping back into the coffeeshop – the actual, _proper _coffeeshop without broken lights and signs on every item, person and surface in sight – feels... strange. The lights are too bright. There’s a vibration of discomfort echoing under Thomas’s skin. Everything seems normal. There’s Quil in the corner table, nodding along to whatever the Starbucks guy is saying, several people queued up at the counter, Roman setting up the stage area for another open mic afternoon. Virgil’s perched on the counter and he’s picking at his nails, and Logan is... nowhere to be seen, actually. Which suits Thomas fine even though he feels a bit guilty about it. Patton’s not – _Dad’s_ not there. That makes sense. He’s stopping by tomorrow.

“Everything good there, Tommy-Get-Your-Gun?” Roman says. There’s something sharp and wary about his eyes that... Thomas feels a cold tightening in his chest. He pushes it away, because this is _Roman. _

“Yeah, it’s great,” he says. “Just... what’s up with that shop across the street?”

Roman lets out a laugh-scoff. “Oh, _them? _Those espresso-extinguishing embezzlers, they’re always trying to get us shut down for health code violations or whatever nonsense they have up their sleeves this week. Tricky bastards they are, make no mistake! But not to worry, Thomas, we’re on the side of right and might. And our humble coffeeshop will always prevail.”

“Oh,” says Thomas. Mulls this over for a moment. “But I thought we didn’t have any problems around here?”

“We don’t,” Roman says, blinking back at him. “Unless you count Virgil’s _totally wrong, _obviously incorrect Tom Nook conspiracy theories, which I have so many problems with that I’d need to borrow the fingers of every patron in this shop to count them all on –”

“_Fuck all landlords,_” Virgil yells from behind the counter.

“ – or our comedic yet deeply charming weekly attempts to stop your dad from finding out about our only-very-slightly-illegal pride flag smuggling operation, but those are just par for the course. We live interesting and exciting existences that somehow manage to be relatively mild and calm nonetheless. It’s a delicate balancing act. You know that.”

“Right, of course,” Thomas says. “We have perfect lives, only beset by very mild tragedies that all get resolved within a week or less and leave us none the worse for wear. I know that, obviously. But then where do...” He waves to the window. The sign for The Dark Side can be seen across the street, although it’s hazy through the rainbow decals and the slight misting of ash and dust on the window. “...you know, _they, _come in? Didn’t Virgil say there were death threats or something?”

“Did he?” Roman frowns. “Did you say something about death threats, Fright Yagami?”

“There _will_ be death threats if you call me that again,” Virgil says. “What are we talking about?”

“From the – the other coffeeshop.” Thomas points across the road, again. “I could’ve _sworn _you mentioned weird death threats.”

Virgil blinks. “Uh, they’re mildly creepy and they’re trying to shut us down, but death threats would be _completely _out of tone for us. Them, I mean.”

“Hey, maybe we should try to hit _them _with a health code violation,” Roman says, snapping his fingers. “That much black paint slathered onto their windows and awnings can’t be healthy for anyone. I’d bet you anything there’s lead in it! Do you think we can take them to court, or is that too depressing? Lead is _dangerous._”

“There’s lead in most paint, Roman,” Logan says and _goddamn it why does he appear just like that. _It’s like he’s rising up from the ground out of _nowhere_. “Thomas – ”

Thomas tries not-so-subtly to scramble away and hide behind the counter. He gets tangled in the broken wreck of the willow tree again and just about screams with frustration. “Ah, uh, Logan, I’m super sorry, I’m just so ridiculously swamped... with... _work!_ Gosh, there’s just so much work to do; can’t talk right now, love you, sorry _bye – ”_

“I love you too,” Logan says, blinking, “obviously I do, but that does not negate the fact that we _really need to talk_ – ”

Thomas escapes the willow tree and fumbles for the door handle behind the counter. One of them. There’s four to choose from, and he’s aiming for the basement, so he’s actually surprised when he gets the right one on the first try. He throws himself through, slams it shut behind him, and breathes in the dusty air of the basement.

Sweet silence. Just him and his thoughts. Well, and all the pointless rubbish that they’ve got lying around, but that’s kind of par for the course when you’re hanging out in the basement.

After a moment, he makes his way down the stairs, past the rows of broken, splintered seating and to the open floor space at the very bottom, where a single podium stands (miraculously untouched) in front of the judge’s chair, which has been split neatly in two with an axe that’s still buried in the wooden frame.

“Where did we even get all this stuff?” Thomas mutters, running a hand through his hair as he glances around.

“I think it was here when Pat bought the place,” says someone from behind him.

Thomas screams and flails and jumps backwards, but it’s just Virgil, whose mysterious abilities of sneaking up on him from seemingly nowhere have struck again. He’s standing in the doorway at the top of the basement step, illuminated from behind by the soft rosy glow of the coffeeshop. He looks slightly concerned. “Everything good? I think you kinda offended Logan back there.”

“Don’t _do _that,” wheezes Thomas. His nerves are still shot from... well, basically everything that’s happened today.

“Do what?” Virgil says with an innocently evil little grin, and then tilts his head back so his face is half in shadow. Hang on, there’s something about his face – “Oh, Thomas, did I _scare _you? Scare you with my pale face and creepy eyeshadow and _sudden appearances out of nowhere?_”

“You,” says Thomas, trying to work out what’s weird about this, because he knows there’s _something,_ “are about as scary as a scolding from Patton about getting back to work, especially when he’s been goofing off just as much as the rest of us.” Did that happen? That probably happened, right? He swears he can remember remembering it happening.

“Oof, ouch, how will my fragile ego ever recover.” Virgil descends the stairs at an easy meander, joining him next to the podium. “You’re still calling your dad by his first name? Something happen there?”

“Wha – oh, yeah.” Thomas frowns, momentarily distracted from his current dilemma as he tries to recall something else. “Yeah, no, we’re – we... had an argument, I think?”

“You think you had an argument,” Virgil says.

“We definitely probably had an argument,” Thomas corrects quickly. “And now I’m almost certainly doing it to assert dominance, maybe.”

“That makes complete sense,” Virgil agrees, nodding. He glances around the basement, and his eyes fall on a set of seats to the far right of them. He frowns, and doesn’t say anything for a moment. “I think this place is setting off my allergies. Are you done with hiding from Logan – can we leave here now?”

“You don’t have any allergies,” Thomas notes absently, and then, “and you don’t need to hang around if you don’t want. I just needed a few minutes to myself, before... you know.”

Virgil hums, but doesn’t leave. He reaches out behind him, finds the cracked and splintered wood of the defendant’s table, and slides backwards to sit down on its surface, cross-legged. “Saw you go across the street,” he says.

Thomas feels a jolt of pure, cold fear. Adrenaline all through his body. He doesn’t even know _why. _“Uh, you – no. You didn’t. Because that didn’t happen. Must’ve been someone else – ” His throat closes up. _Yes, and. _“I mean – yeah, I did. And?”

“And I’m not going to tell anyone, stop panicking.” Virgil rolls his eyes. “Where you go on your lunch break is your business. I just feel like I should warn you, those guys are super shady.”

“Heh.” Thomas cracks a weak smile. “Nice. Shady, because – Dark Side?” He sees Virgil giving him a strange look of incomprehension, and shakes his head. “Okay, never mind.”

“Yeah. Listen, look after yourself,” Virgil says. “I know you’ve been going to therapy lately, but that doesn’t mean you should start doing dumb stuff like talking to the creepy evil coffeeshop owner from across the street.”

Oh yes, that. Thomas tries to remember the date of his last therapy appointment. He can’t, but he must have had one. He _must _be going to therapy, because that’s why he feels so much better. He’s been so much happier lately. Seriously, all his emotional and psychological problems are pretty much gone at this point! Therapy is amazing, magical stuff. He’s got to thank Logan for recommending that he do that.

Everything’s great, there are no problems, but... there’s a few things still nagging at him. Like Janus’s number in his phone, weighing down his pocket like it’s made of lead. And something else. Hm. This is a pretty big something else, actually.

“Hey, Virge,” says Thomas slowly, trying to think of how best to phrase this.

“Yeah?” says Virgil, yawning.

“Has it ever occurred to you that it’s... really_ extremely _weird that you, me, Roman, Logan, and, like, basically half of the people in the coffeeshop right now have exactly the same face?”

The expression on Virgil’s face goes straight from ‘in the midst of giving mildly helpful life advice’ to something closer to the sort look he’d acquire if Thomas suddenly announced his deep and genuine belief in a pancake-shaped Earth, chemicals in the water turning people gay, and a moon landing that was not only faked but a massive cover-up to hide the fact that the moon had been destroyed in a freak accident decades earlier, all at once.

“What?” he says, and then, “_what? _What the hell are you even talking about?”

Thomas gestures at himself, then back at Virgil, and then to the door behind him where Roman and Logan probably still are. “Same face. Same eyes, same hair, same height... we’re all basically clones.”

“We look nothing alike! Thomas! You have _brown hair!_”

Thomas gapes at him. “So do you!”

“That’s not the point!” Virgil practically screeches, and then, “Thomas, are you getting all conspiracy-theorist on me again? You know that’s not healthy.”

“What? When have I ever gotten all – ” Thomas flails, somewhat wildly, and does bunny-ears. “‘Conspiracy theorist’? Isn’t that meant to be your thing?”

“_Yes, and,_” Virgil snaps, looking frightened.

“I _know _I picked up the whole ‘conspiracy theorist’ thing from you and those Youtube videos you constantly send me, but just because it’s a conspiracy doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you,” Thomas says instantly, which clears up the look of mild horror on Virgil’s face somewhat. “I’m just saying... it’s a heck of a weird coincidence, yeah? All of us, sharing a face?”

Virgil shakes his head. “I think you need to check the statistics on that one, because as far as I can remember, brown hair and brown eyes were fairly common traits for, uh, a _lot _of people to have.”

Thomas wants to push it further, he really does, but it looks like Virgil’s past the point of having fun with this conversation, and is looking actually distressed at the idea of continuing it. So he lets it go, even though it makes his stomach squirm with discomfort and his fingers clench. “...I guess you’re right. Sorry, just... had a moment, there. Y’know how it is. Love you,” he adds, smiling. He mimics Virgil’s usual two-fingered salute as best as he can, and is pleased to see Virgil crack a rare genuine grin in response as he returns it.

“Love you too,” he says, and for once it doesn’t sound like it’s being dragged out of him kicking and screaming. “Look, let’s see if Roman’s okay with closing up early today. We can all head home, and you can get some sleep – ‘cause, honestly? It sounds like you need it.”

“Sounds good. Maybe I do,” Thomas says, and lets Virgil lead him up the stairs and back into the bright warmth of the coffeeshop.

*

Thomas doesn’t sleep at all that night, even though they do end up closing early. Too much to think about, too much that keeps flitting out of his grasp the moment he tries to focus on it.

That doesn’t matter, though. Being tired isn’t something he ever has to deal with.

And he can never remember his dreams, anyway.

*

This doesn’t feel right, thinks Thomas, as he watches Roman, hauling several large, dripping slabs of raw steak behind him as he heads over to the makeshift stage, like he’s a zookeeper heading off to feed legions of ravenous tigers. He can’t quite put his finger on it, but he thinks that there might be something distinctly wrong with this.

It’s not just the whole face-thing. (And that probably has some sort of rational explanation, like convergent evolution or chaos theory or something. Logan could probably tell him what’s up with that, but he doesn’t want to ask; honestly just can’t be bothered to.) It’s a niggling little feeling of unease that doesn’t quite make his heart beat faster, but _does _make it feel like it doesn’t sit quite right in his chest. Like everything’s slightly sideways, even though nothing at all is wrong with the world.

He hits the espresso machine as it begins to emit acrid clouds of choking black smoke, and briefly considers opening it up to see if anything weird’s found its way inside again. But then he remembers Roman’s advice about ignoring it, and decides to follow that.

Ah, darn, he’s got himself caught in the willow tree again. They should really get rid of that at some point, it’s beginning to get seriously unwieldy. It’s almost like it’s growing.

Wake up. Get breakfast. Get into Virgil’s car, get to work. Perfect day. Go home. Dinner, bed. Rinse and repeat. It’s not tedious because nothing this good could get tedious. You can’t get bored of real life, can you?

What day is it, again?

Wake up. Get breakfast. Get into Virgil’s car, get to work.

Wake up.

Thomas goes into the office, after a brief struggle where he can’t remember which door is the right one. All the labels have been scratched out with a thick black marker.

He checks the schedule. All the shifts seem all right. Virgil, Roman, and him, marked in every day, for the rest of eternity. Which is just how it’s supposed to be. Dad’s stopping by tomorrow. Open mic night the day after. They’re going to prune back the willow tree the day after that. Everything’s perfectly in order, so why is he crying? Does it matter?

He smears the tears off his face with his apron, and adjusts his nametag, and gets on with things. Check the inventory. (Everything’s in order, of course.) Get food from the supply cupboard. Be careful not to look too closely at what surrounds him. Heat up the food. Fill up the display cabinet.

There’s something in his pocket.

“Virgil,” says Thomas, hand hovering over the side of his jeans. “I have the horrible suspicion that something has gone terribly wrong with reality and I’m the only one in this coffeeshop who’s actually able to perceive it.”

“I feel like that every day of my life,” Virgil says. “You’re not special. Hold that thought, we’ve got a customer.”

A man walks up to the counter. A sheet of paper with the words ‘ICE DISPENSER’ on it is taped neatly to his t-shirt.

“Good morning, welcome to the coffeeshop, what can I get you?” says Virgil blandly, grabbing for a pencil.

The man stares at Virgil blankly for a long few seconds, before his mouth cranks open slowly, like it’s on a rusty hinge. He proceeds to produce the most horrific, guttural rattling noise Thomas has ever heard in his life.

This continues for nearly two full minutes.

Virgil nods along, jotting down notes on the pad of paper by the cash register. “I see. And did you want sugar with that?”

Another rattling noise, this time even louder and more drawn-out. The customer sounds like he’s choking in the most painful, undignified manner possible, with the full knowledge that nobody will ever come to save or assist him.

Virgil sympathetically pushes a table number over the counter at him. “If you have a loyalty card, I can stamp that for you now,” he says solemnly.

The customer declines this offer with another resigned deathrattle. He pays for his order with cash, tips extravagantly, and nods at Thomas before taking table marker number seventy-six, and trudging sadly away.

“Huh,” says Thomas.

Virgil sets about making the coffee. “Yeah, he’s probably our best tipper. But what were you talking about? Something being, uh, ‘horribly wrong with reality’?”

“Yeah, I don’t know what I was saying,” says Thomas. “Forget about it.”

He feels in his pocket, and realizes that the penny from yesterday is still there. He touches it and it’s cold and he draws it out and it’s heads-side-up.

He drops it back in.

Thomas kind of stumbles his way through the day, after that. It’s a lovely day, of course, but he only witnesses the loveliness in blurry flashes of color and smiles and sudden moments of clarity as he serves yet another familiar customer with their complicated, hard-to-remember orders. He gets all of the orders right first-go. He doesn’t even need to think about it, half the time. He never has.

“Thomas –” says someone.

“Not _now, _Logan,” he says. “I don’t need you for this.”

There are so many doors behind the counter. Why are there so many doors? No, the amount of doors there is the right amount, all coffeshops are supposed to have four... six... however-many-there-are doors behind the counter.

Something in his pocket. A phone, a coin. Coins. What’s so special about coins, what is it, _what is it._

Virgil’s not behind the counter anymore. He looks up and Logan’s not there either, and Roman must be taking a break, so – just him. Thomas, alone. Funny how that makes his heart clench unpleasantly.

Thomas takes a coin from the tip jar, a dime. Nothing special. He holds it up, turns it end over end. The burnished silver; the disembodied head of Roosevelt on one side, the torch-and-branches on the other. Bumpy ridged edges, faintly metallic when he brings it up to his nose to sniff. A normal coin. Right.

He tosses it up in the air; watches it fall end-over-end through the air. Catches it in his palm. Looks down. Heads.

Tosses it again. Heads.

Throws it up, lets it fall with a clatter to the counter. Waits until it’s finished rattling around before he looks at it properly. Heads. He swipes it off the table, kneels down to see where it’s hit the floor. Heads again.

Thomas’s heart is suddenly racing unreasonably fast. He picks up the tip jar, half-full-up with money of all denominations, and scoops up a handful from it. He throws them to the counter haphazardly. Some of them scatter to the floor, but he doesn’t care. He’s looking at the coins on the countertop and seeing that they’ve all come up heads, and he has a horrible feeling that the ones on the floor are all lying heads-side-up too.

The tip jar is still in his hand. He looks at it; looks around at the shop. Bright lights and rainbows everywhere, plastered on walls and tables and any surface that can hold them. People chatting pleasantly at the tables, enjoying their drinks, enjoying each other’s company, enjoying the day. It’s so nice. It’s _so _nice. It’s the most perfect coffeeshop he’s ever been in. Why does he feel like screaming?

Thomas isn’t sure how conscious the decision to let go of the tip jar is. He sees it fall almost in slow motion – the glass slipping from his hand, falling through the air, shattering into glittering splintering fractals. The coins spilling everywhere. Bouncing, skittering, falling across the floorboards. Every one of them coming to rest on the same result – heads, heads, _heads. _

Nobody seems to notice as he sinks to the ground, surrounded by hundreds upon thousands of glaring accusing coins with all _exactly the same side facing up. _They just keep talking, grinning, laughing, enjoying their coffee. It’s perfect. Every bit of it is so sickeningly, hollowly perfect. The colors are bright and the sunlight filters through the windows in picture-perfect patterns laid out on the tables and walls. The faces of everyone around him are either_ his _face, reflected back to him in perfect grinning detail, or they’re just plain _wrong, _and it’s like literally nobody else can see how wrong it all is.

“Thomas,” says a familiar voice, and he looks up to see Roman leaning over him, face tight with worry. “Thomas, dear _Zeus, _what happened – did you cut yourself? Here, I’ll help you, let me find a broom – ”

“Roman,” says Thomas, reaching up to grab onto his wrists with something like desperation, “Roman, listen, I think something’s really wrong. _Really _wrong. I don’t know if it’s just me or if the entire world’s gone crazy all of a sudden, but – ”

He stops.

Stops dead in his tracks and looks at Roman, _really _looks at him, because the concern in his eyes is fading and being replaced with... exasperation. Annoyance. Frustration, even, although he’s very clearly trying to press back all of those things behind a mask of moderate indifference. It’s not working very well.

“I... really thought you were enjoying this,” he says. He doesn’t pull back from Thomas, not physically, but he seems to visibly wilt a bit. “Everyone looked like they were having fun. Did I get something wrong? Was it the shop layout, or... or, Patton? Did you want him here – maybe I should just... tweak things around a bit...”

_What,_ thinks Thomas.

“What,” he says out loud. “Roman, I... don’t know what you’re talking about. All I know is that this isn’t right and... and, to be honest, you’re terrifying me. A _lot. _What’s going on?”

“Okay, _all right, _okay – this isn’t working?” Roman rips off his apron in one quick, frantic movement. “That’s fine! I have a hundred, no, a _thousand, _no – _millions _of other ideas we can try! Is it the people? Let’s get rid of Logan! We can do this without him! Or, or, let’s mix things up! Maybe take Virgil out too, maybe we can just have me and you, and we don’t even need to run the coffeeshop at all, do we? Yes, _yeah, _let’s – we can redo eighth grade, Thomas, that’s it, that’s what we need to do!”

“Eighth grade?” Thomas asks, feeling horror bubble up inside of him. Horror mixed with a faint sense of... delight?

“It _sucked, _Thomas, eighth grade objectively sucked and you know it, but don’t worry – we can fix it, retroactively!” Roman’s grin is maniac, lighting his face up with unholy glee. He’s radiant and beautiful as he gesticulates and gestures wildly. “You’re so much better now, imagine what redoing fifth grade with all this future knowledge would be like! You’ll be so _cool _and _calm _and _suave _and you won’t have to sit back and just _take _what your bastard of an English teacher dishes out to you – imagine all the stories you could plagiarize without anyone ever realizing! Let’s do it, Thomas, just you and me! Turning back the hands of time is an absolute _breeze _in the confines of your own head!”

“Roman – ” Thomas struggles to his feet. “Roman, you’re... you’re scaring me. What is this? What’s going on?”

Roman barely seems to hear him. “The only real question is, do we start from the beginning of the year? Or should be just jump to the _juicy _parts? The bits where it’ll be fun to change everything up a bit? You know what? We _should _skip. It’s not like anyone’s ever going to know, and if we don’t get it right, we can always just go back and do it again and again and again and again and _again and – _”

“I don’t _want _to redo eighth grade!” Thomas yells.

“Don’t you?” Roman says, meeting his eyes at last. There’s a horrible charged moment that feels like it’s packed with nuclear chaos, bulging with furious potential, but then Roman just shrugs and it’s defused in less than an instant. “Too close to reality? Okay, let’s go to _space! _Millions of worlds out there to explore, and none of it has to make any sense! We can go to Mars and catch sunlight in a box, or go running over the rooftops at midnight in a glowing city made up entirely of smoke, or – or – ”

“Roman!” Thomas says, and grabs Roman’s shoulders. “Roman, I don’t want to go to space or go to sea or go to Hogwarts or _anything. _I don’t want a fantasy world, because I _can’t _live in one of those, no matter how pretty or amazing it is. Roman, _please, _I just want to live in the real world!”

Silence.

“You talked to Deceit, didn’t you,” Roman says. He doesn’t sound _cold _or _angry_, exactly, just sort of... numbly betrayed.

“I...” Thomas struggles to remember _something. _Something important. “I don’t know. Did I?”

“You must have,” says Roman, every word suddenly underlined with sour, tangible bitterness, “because Thomas, that is the biggest lie you’ve _ever _told me.”

The coffeeshop explodes. Or maybe Thomas does, or maybe it’s just the inside of Thomas’s head, or maybe it’s all of the above. For a long long moment all he can see is lights and flashing colors and then he’s falling through an endless cascade of his worst nightmares and darkest thoughts, all funnelled around him in a kaleidoscope of regret.

And when he hits the ground, the impact is tremendous. His bones break and his organs burst and his skull fractures inwards, shattering backwards and piercing right through his brain. He’s paralysed with the pain, so much so that he can’t even scream.

“Eight-point-five out of ten!” exclaims someone a short distance away. “Form was perfect, could’ve stuck the landing _just _a bit better. The brain damage was a lovely touch, _massive _kudos. Was that my idea? I can’t remember.”

“I think it might have been,” says Thomas. “I can’t think of anyone else who’s put this much thought into what it feels like to drown in my own cerebrospinal fluid.”

“Oh, _neat, _I’ve been hoping you’d get some mileage out of that one.” A pause. “You done bleeding to death down there?”

Thomas considers this for a moment. “Yeah,” he says. “I think so.” He sits up and shakes it off, and when he looks up, Remus is crouching in front of him. The expression on his face isn’t gleeful or malicious or anything, it’s just plain old curious. “Remus,” he says, unsurprised. “Did... are you... what is this place meant to be?”

“Oh, probably hell,” Remus says with a shrug. “You know how it is.” He makes a little gesture towards Thomas, but doesn’t motion to help him up. “I’d offer you a hand, but I used my last one for the tip jar.”

Thomas gets up slowly. Remus continues crouching there, considering him. “Uh, thanks. I appreciate the sentiment.”

“Do you really?”

“No.”

“Figures,” says Remus with a light little sigh. “Nobody appreciates the effort I go into making hands, honestly. Like, _sure, _I could just go and whip them up out of nowhere, but what’s the point of that? Where’s the artistry_? _The _finesse_?”

Thomas doesn’t particularly care about Remus’s gruesome segues at the moment. “Listen, I just – you know this place better than I do, right? How do I get out of here?

“You could try suicide,” Remus says after a moment of what appears to be genuine, thoughtful consideration.

“But I don’t have a rope,” replies Thomas. He thinks that it should maybe be more distressing to him that he can’t think of any other reasons to object to Remus’s suggestion. But there’s a lot going on right now, so.

“Use my sash,” Remus offers, tugging it off with a flourish.

“Too short,” Thomas says. “I don’t think I could tie a noose in it if I tried.”

“Sounds to me like you’re making excuses,” Remus says with narrowed eyes and a tilt of the head. “Are my ideas just not good enough for you? Is that it?”

“No, I...” Thomas struggles for a moment. Why _can’t _he use the sash? He could rip it in half, tie the pieces together, do it again if that’s not long enough. “Well, there’s nowhere to hang it from.”

“Try the tree,” Remus says helpfully.

“What tree?” Thomas says, and then, “oh.”

The willow tree is still so very dead, horrible and twisted and rotting, but even despite that, it’s somehow managed to grow. Tangling prickly branches snaking outwards, a blight against the nothingness. Thomas looks at it, long and hard and careful, and feels revulsion welling up in him like a plague. He hates it. He wants to destroy it, rip it apart with his bare hands and damn all the splinters he’ll inevitably get in the process.

“I’m not getting anywhere near that thing,” he tells Remus.

“But you worked so hard on it,” Remus replies. “You might as well put it to use, right?”

Thomas just shakes his head. He hates it, he hates what it represents, he hates... who does he hate? “I... no. I can’t. I just want to get out of here.”

“Shame,” says Remus. “Can’t help you there. Good luck finding someone who can, though!”

And he throws himself backwards into nothingness. The moment he does, everything goes up in a massive spurt of blood. It lacerates reality with its intensity, far too thick and stinking of iron and rot, and Thomas is swept away in it, drowning and sobbing in the everything of it all. He reaches for his phone and fumbles blindly at the screen, knowing that he doesn’t even have the faintest hope of calling who he wants to call. He opens his mouth and yells out a name that is so very unintelligible through all the blood that even _he _can barely make it out. And for a moment, he thinks he’s lost.

Then something hooks around his arm, just under his elbow. Thomas gasps in relief. Instant mistake. The blood soaks into his lungs and even as he’s tugged out of it, all he can taste is red red red.

Hands, firm and unyielding, grasp him by the shoulders and brush sticky-stained hair from his eyes. Thomas tries to speak – to thank his rescuer? To ask for help? – but all that emerges is a pained gargle and a trickle of red from the corner of his mouth. Thomas reaches out to grasp at him, misses, and gags painfully, convulsing.

“Yep,” sighs Janus, and heaves Thomas pragmatically onto his side as he wheezes and chokes and claws pointlessly at his chest. “This might as well happen, with the state you’re in.” He pounds him on the back several times, and holds Thomas as he starts coughing up a seemingly endless stream of oozing liquid that’s somehow become more bile than blood at this point. “Shh – here, here.” He fumbles at one hand, tugging and teasing the yellow glove from it, and offers it to Thomas, who latches onto it like a lifeline. He squeezes it as he retches unhappily, and feels Janus squeezing back. “It’s all right, it’s all going to be fine – this is imaginary, it’ll wash out like it was never there. I’m here. Come on, get it all out. I’m not going to let anything else happen to you, Thomas, you’ll be _fine._”

“Liar,” Thomas manages to rasp from tortured lungs, and he doesn’t even know why he’s saying it. He chokes up some more of the horrible mess. He’s not even sure it’s blood anymore, even though every inch of his skin and clothes is stained with the stuff.

“When necessary,” says Janus, apparently unbothered by the angry accusation. He tears off the sign pinned to his back with his free hand, and then does the same to the one on his arm, and then leans forward, bunching up a corner of his cape to wipe fastidiously at the side of Thomas’s ooze-stained mouth. “But then again, aren’t we all?”

Thomas coughs up what he hopes is the last of the blood, spitting it onto the ground and crawling away from it to half-collapse, some distance away. The inside of his mouth tastes like death. The inside of his brain also feels quite a bit like death as well. On the whole, he’s not doing so great.

Janus comes and sits next to him, and extends an arm out. “Here. You’re all right, Thomas; you’re going to be all right.”

Thomas curls up on himself, leans into Janus’s embrace and the warm darkness of his button-up suit shirt and closes his eyes and tries to believe him. He feels a hand in his hair and fingers skritching gently at his scalp, and he sighs, melting into it.

And for a good long while he just stays there. Wet and sticky and miserable, huddled in the safety of Janus’s lap. Because he just wants to be looked after, even if it’s only for a minute or two. And Janus seems perfectly willing to oblige.

“Okay,” he mutters eventually. He cracks open his eyes; stares up at Janus. “I don’t... I don’t understand any of this. What’s going on?”

“You know, I should be asking you the very same question,” Janus replies. He’s not looking at Thomas. He’s staring into the far distance. Because apparently now there’s a far distance to stare into. Before it had just been blood and darkness and willow tree, but now it’s curiously flat and blank. There’s even a nondescript dull blue sky stretching out above them.

“Can you please not be evasive and cryptic for once?” Thomas begs.

“‘For once’,” says Janus. Blinks, long and slow. Snakelike. Still doesn’t look down at Thomas. “So you remember me being evasive and cryptic in the past? You’re not still trying to ignore everything that distresses you?”

“Yes,” says Thomas. “I don’t know. Maybe.” Reluctantly, he uncoils from Janus’s lap, and sits across from him. Not too far. He doesn’t want to get too far from Janus at all right now.

His clothes are a mess of quickly-congealing blood that’s becoming stiff and scratchy against his skin. He must look absolutely dreadful, he thinks. He’s almost glad it’s only Janus here, because he doesn’t think that Janus is going to judge him for feeling like an absolute train wreck of a human being.

“Remus did the whole... blood-spurt thing,” he says, and watches for a reaction.

Janus only nods. “I did wonder. It seemed like his modus operandi, but with the way things are going today...” He trails off. It’s almost meaningful. And then he shakes his head, and actually looks at Thomas. “How are you feeling?”

“Like I’m the unwilling subject of an edgy second-year university avant-garde art project,” Thomas says. “Where _are _we?”

“Honest answer time?” Janus asks.

“_Please._”

“Well, in a metaphysical sense, most likely some sort of self-imposed hell.”

“Oh,” says Thomas. “Oh, good.” He digests this. “And in a less metaphysical sense?”

“Now that I couldn’t tell you. Knowing you, it’s most likely a tossup between the living room, in the approximate vicinity of the couch, or your bedroom. If you have any suspicion that you happen to be doing this somewhere else, I’d advise you to hurry up and get it all over with so we don’t receive any more of those angry letters from the neighbours and/or local police.”

“Ah.”

“Indeed.”

Thomas tucks up his knees to his chest and hunches over onto them, burying his face in his arms. All he can smell is blood and vomit and he hates it but there’s nothing he can do. After a second, he says, “I’m so tired, Janus.”

“I know,” says Janus softly.

“Sometimes I think,” he says, and then stops. There is a curling sensation of horrified guilt welling up in his chest preventing him from getting the rest of the words out. “I think I should just – ” He doesn’t want to say it. Not even to... whatever Janus is to him. Maybe if he just ignores it, it’ll go away. “I...”

“I know, Thomas.” He sounds so very exhausted. Helpless. He reaches out his one gloveless hand, again, but this time Thomas ignores it and just hugs himself tighter. “I’m sorry. I wish there was something I could do.”

Thomas swallows that sick feeling of shame, which tastes a lot like copper and bile. “I’m... I’m not going to do... anything. I just need someone to know.”

“I do. I already did.” He lays his bare hand on Thomas’s lower back, light as anything. The gentleness of it makes Thomas’s flesh crawl with an emotion he can’t describe. He’s pretty sure he doesn’t deserve it. “I’m about to tell you something, and it’s going to sound an awful lot like a lie.”

“Okay,” says Thomas, and turns his head sideways so he doesn’t have to make eye contact.

“It’s not a lie,” Janus clarifies, somewhat anxiously.

“Okay,” Thomas says again.

“Okay,” agrees Janus, and pauses. “I love you.”

Thomas thinks about this for a moment.

“Yeah,” he says, “you’re right. That sounds a lot like a lie.” He looks up. “I want to get out of here. What do I have to do? Do I need to go somewhere, do something, or can I just... wake up...?”

“That really depends,” says Janus, an unreadable expression falling away from his face, and he nods in the direction he’d been staring off into, earlier. “Look.”

Thomas looks. He sees, amidst all the blankness and indistinctness, a street and a curb and a coffeeshop sitting incongruously right in the middle. The sign at the top has been torn down violently, but the impression of a round, friendly font with hints of rainbow can still be seen above it. The front windows are smashed. The lights are off.

“Oh,” he says. Blinks. Considers. “Patton’s going to be upset about that.”

“Well, I think we both know that’s a lie,” Janus says, and slips his glove back on. “Really, I doubt your dear old sense of morality had any idea it existed in the first place.”

“Tomorrow never comes,” Thomas murmurs. “Then... where – where is-?”

“Patton? God knows. Probably taking a well-deserved nap somewhere in your brain where it isn’t broken chaos, if that even _exists._ Or he’s dead,” Janus adds thoughtfully. “Always a possibility.”

Thomas’s fingers clench. “That’s a badly-timed joke that’s in very poor taste,” he says tonelessly, not phrasing it as a question because he doesn’t_ want _it to be something that has a multiple-choice sort of answer.

“Ah. Yes.” Janus looks a bit remorseful, which... yeah. Good. “If Patton were dead... well. Trust me, you’d know about it. I’m sure that would be an entirely different can of frogs to deal with. As it is...” A little puff of a sigh. “I don’t claim to be an expert on your creativity’s inner workings, but I suspect that he’s not very happy with Patton at the moment. I can easily imagine him being, ah, sidelined from the narrative, so to speak.”

“Because of... the whole _you_ thing.” Thomas shuts his eyes for a second; _has _to shut them because of the sudden stab of overwhelming guilt and loathing that threatens to make his entire body fold in on itself. It’s not even _his _guilt. Or is it? It’s hard to tell. “Oh no.”

“All coming back now, is it?” Janus’s voice has a hint of bitterness to it.

“Yeah.” He considers opening his eyes again, but can’t quite work up the willpower. “Roman made the place. Logan was... he was there, but I think he was trying to let me know what was going on. Something about theatre? But I kept ignoring him.”

“Logic doesn’t have much of a place in idle fantasies, no.”

“What about Virgil?” Thomas opens his eyes, looks over at Janus. “He – he was just, going along with it. Wait, _was _that Virgil? Or just some, some – I don’t know, some sort of construct?”

Janus frowns, looks away. “Knowing Virgil...”

“You know Virgil?”

“Obviously, but that’s a story for another time. _Knowing Virgil, _I’d say yes, that most likely was him.”

“So why did he act like nothing was wrong?” Thomas says. “He’s _anxiety. _Shouldn’t he have been right up there with you and Remus, trying to shatter the coffeeshop windows or whatever?”

“Sometimes,” says Janus, “well, sometimes it’s easier to sink into a comfortable cushion of lies and brightly-colored fantasies, rather then become more and more distressed at the reality of a situation. I know that, and I’m sure you do too. And with the state of things as they _are... _is it really any wonder that Virgil would prefer to live in a world where his family are happy and getting along, and where you don’t hate him in the least?”

”I don’t hate Virgil,” Thomas says blankly.

“I see. And have you bothered to tell him that recently?”

Thomas breathes in, and breathes out, and says, “Oh, cool.. I fucked up so bad that my anxiety decided to go and hide out on the island of the lotus eaters rather than bother me about his feelings. That’s fun!”

Janus examines his fingernails. Wait, he’s wearing gloves. He examines where his fingernails would be if he wasn’t wearing gloves. Thomas has no idea why he’s doing that. “Well, to be _fair, _you also decided that a metaphorical Lotus-Eater Island would be a pleasant vacation destination, so maybe you shouldn’t be throwing paint in a greenhouse you don’t want to spend hours cleaning up.”

“We’re doing a metaphor now? Okay,” Thomas says. “_Maybe_ Roman shouldn’t have booked us all a first-class ticket to metaphorical lotus-land without asking me!”

Janus looks slowly up from his nonexistent fingernail-checking. His gaze is sad but knowing. “Are you sure about that?”

Thomas is about to ask Janus what he means by that, but then the door to the coffeeshop opens, swinging strangely on one broken hinge. A figure steps out, laptop tucked under one arm, neatly and precisely closes the door behind him, and begins to walk with purpose towards Thomas and Janus.

“Logan,” says Thomas with a choked little exhale of relief, and reaches out. “I’m sorry. God, I’m so sorry.”

Logan takes his hand with the faintest of squeezes and joins them on the ground, situating his laptop neatly in his lap. Straight-backed and cross-legged, that’s how Logan sits, and he makes it seem like the very peak of professionality, too.

“I would not advise going in there,” he says, glancing over at Janus. He doesn’t let go of Thomas’s hand. “He is... not happy with you, to say the least.”

“Oh, _please_, continue to tell me things I don’t know already,” Janus says.

“I’m _so _sorry,” Thomas repeats, unable to stop apologizing. “I just kept ignoring you, and brushing you off, and – ”

“I’m used to it,” says Logan shortly.

Thomas flinches, because... well, the truth hurts. They _do _ignore Logan. A lot. Entirely too much. He’s kind of falling to pieces, isn’t he? It’s probably no wonder he keeps thinking about – _nope. _Not now. “I’m sorry,” he repeats again.

Logan’s face softens, just a bit. “I know,” he says. “Don’t worry about it for the moment.”

“Agreed,” says Janus. “We have more important things to worry about. Such as Roman’s charming flair for the dramatic, and how to end all of this.”

“Yeah,” says Thomas. “Yeah, that would be nice. And I’d also like to be not completely covered in blood soon, if at all possible.”

Logan looks gently puzzled. “Then don’t be. It’s not as if you’re actually covered in blood right now, is it?”

“Of course I – ” Thomas stops to think about the situation as it stands for a moment. _Really _think about it. “Oh. Huh. I guess I’m not.” He looks down, and the blood is gone. Normal clothes, once again. His skin still feels sticky and prickly and awful, but it’s not because of anything physical. “Why did I ignore you, again? That was... a very stupid thing to do. Feel free to throw your laptop at me if I do it again.”

“Oh, I plan to,” says Logan. “Now, if you’re prepared to actually listen...?”

Thomas nods. “What were you trying to tell me, back in the coffeeshop? Was it just all ‘the matrix has you’ sort of stuff, or...?”

“The-?” Logan blinks. “I... no. I _had _hoped that your background in theatre would be enough to help you interpret the context clues I was handing out to you, left right and centre. But apparently not. And when I attempted to make it more obvious...”

“I started running away from you.” Thomas resists the urge to bury his head in his hands. “Right. Of course I did. Theatre of Cruelty, right?”

Logan nods. “Immersive performance art, with the audience at the centre of the piece and immersed in the action. Designed to force them into _feeling_ by overwhelming them. Typically more Remus’s area, generally speaking, but – ”

“But I’m fucking losing my mind,” Thomas says dully, brief moment of good humor draining quickly away as quickly as it had come. “So everything’s blurring together. And Roman decided to Theatre-of-Cruelty _me _because he wanted everything to be... be better.”

“You’re not losing your mind,” Logan says, gaze snapping up to Thomas with unexpected sharpness. “Thomas – please, _look at me._ You are _not _losing your mind; I think I would be the first to know. And you are misinterpreting what I’m telling you. Deliberately, I suspect.”

“If I’m not losing my mind,” Thomas says, “please feel free to explain why I’m currently sitting in a shifting, writhing hellscape of my own creation, outside a broken coffeeshop that houses the last of my hopes and dreams, while the embodiment of my logic fails to convince me that I don’t deserve this. And also throw in an explanation as to why I’m feeling more and more suicidal with every passing day – thanks! I’d really appreciate that!”

Logan looks at Thomas. Really looks at him, long and hard and sad, and then he swivels out from sitting cross-legged and shuffles forwards. He reaches out, then carefully and precisely folds Thomas into a hug. For a second Thomas doesn’t know what to think.

“Huh,” he says. “Interesting.”

And then he starts crying.

It’s the sort of crying that’s disgustingly messy and ugly; big fat tears running down his cheeks as he just about chokes on them. And Logan doesn’t shush him or try to tell him it’s going to be all right; he just holds Thomas tight and _breathes_, slow and steady. And honestly that’s better than anything else that he could conceivably be doing.

A hug from Logan is solid and has a reassuring weight unmatched by nearly anything in existence. Logan-hugs happen for a _reason_, and they’re solemn and thoughtful and achingly kind. He doesn’t deserve it. He doesn’t deserve to be this kind to himself. He cries and cries and Logan just squeezes him tighter and cradles Thomas’s head to his shoulder and hums, monotonal, the vibrations echoing through both of their bodies.

Thomas wants to stay like this forever, but has a feeling that might be just as bad as staying in the coffeeshop. Eventually, reluctantly – and it could be after hours of this or it could be just a minute or two; he doesn’t know and either way it still doesn’t feel like nearly enough – he draws away from the hug.

“How do we fix this?” he mutters, scrubbing at his eyes. He’s no longer drenched in blood, but he feels just about as gross as if he were. And he’s pretty much all cried-out by this point.

“Well, technically _we _don’t,” Janus says. “What you need to do is talk to Roman.”

“Talk to Roman and get him to stop this,” Thomas says. “He’s probably in the coffeeshop still, huh?”

Janus and Logan just nod. After a second, so does Thomas.

He takes a moment to try to find the resolve; the motivation to do this. It’s a very long moment because he’s not entirely sure if it’s there. He just wants to badly to _rest. _To fall back into the bright colors and soft lighting of a world where reality is softer, and there’s no rush to do anything at all. Just soft, absurd, unrealistic happiness.

But, no.

He finds something that could maybe be called ‘determination’ if he squints just a bit, and decides that, while it’s shaky and crumbling at the edges, it’s going to have to do for now. “I can do that. I can talk to him. Okay.” He stands up, and notices that neither Logan nor Janus stand with him. They just stay there on the ground, regarding the remains of the coffeeshop with guarded trepidation.

“Aren’t you two coming?” he asks, already sort of knowing what the answer is.

“We will if you ask us to,” Logan tells him, folding his hands neatly in front of him. “But as I said – Roman is not happy with Janus at the moment, and I am not so sure my presence is required in this situation or, indeed, desired.”

“Wha – Logan?” says Thomas, thrown. “Why wouldn’t I need you? You’re my logic, and I’m pretty sure a voice of reason is _exactly _what Roman needs right now. Of course I want you to help.”

Logan’s glasses glint as he tilts his head back to the empty sky. “All previous interactions with him today point to one very well-supported conclusion: he does _not _want to listen to a single word that I have to say. I fail to see how your presence would change that.”

Janus lets out a very soft _hmm_ that sounds quite pointed.

“I can’t make you come with me – I don’t _want _to make you come,” Thomas corrects, “if it makes you uncomfortable. But I’d really appreciate it if you did.” He then eyes Janus. “If... Roman really doesn’t want you there...”

“I understand,” says Janus, waving a hand in gentle dismissal. “Don’t work yourself up about it; I’ll stay out of this.”

Thomas smiles hesitantly at him, and then before he can really process why, it becomes real. “Okay.” He offers a hand to Logan, who accepts it and lets Thomas pull him up so they’re standing side-by-side. “See you later, I guess.”

“Break a leg,” Janus says, folding his arms and pulling his knees up to his chest.

“No leg breakage will occur,” says Logan, mouth set in a grim line.

Janus looks like he wants to laugh, but doesn’t. Instead, he says, “With the mood Roman’s in right now, I wouldn’t be so sure of that.”

*

The coffeshop is dark. The posters on the walls have been messily ripped down, the plates are smashed, the paint on the windows smeared and scratched. Distantly, Thomas can recall Roman and Virgil and him putting it up. It had been saccharine-sweet levels of perfect, but... nice. They’d had fun doing it, even if it was just a pointless daydream of a day.

Roman is nowhere to be seen.

Thomas reaches for Logan’s hand. Logan looks up at him, evidently surprised, and then curls his fingers clumsily around Thomas’s, as if entirely unsure of how to do it. It’s awkward, but comforting nonetheless.

“Roman?” Thomas says, and then says it louder: “Roman?”

Logan frowns, and glances around. “I doubt he would have left. It’s not as if there are many other places to go. Perhaps he’s hiding-?”

But he doesn’t get any further than that, because it’s at that point that one of the infinite number of doors stretching out into eternity behind the front counter opens with a faint creak, and Roman enters, stage left.

He... well, to put it simply, he doesn’t look great. He’s had better days. He’s a tiny bit under the weather.

Oh, who is Thomas kidding, he looks _terrible. _His eyes are rimmed-red, like he’s been crying just as much as Thomas had been only a few minutes ago. His hair is a dishevelled rat’s nest. He’s not wearing the coffeeshop uniform; it’s been discarded in favor of his usual princely attire, but even that is crumpled and torn – sleeves rolled up to his arms, sash hanging off an arm and torn in two.

He walks through the remains of the coffeeshop, barefoot, seemingly careless of the glass and ceramic shards littering the floor, and comes to an unsteady halt in front of Thomas and Logan.

“Hi,” he greets.

“Roman. Are you ready to listen to reason?” Logan says testily.

Thomas squeezes his hand in gentle warning, but Roman just shrugs listlessly. “Fair warning,” he says, voice dull. “I’m kind of... extremely angry at you right now, Thomas. I’d say ‘nothing personal’ but...”

“But it’s very personal,” Thomas finishes. There’s a lump in his throat. “I’m sorry. I really am. But we can’t do this anymore.”

This is all it takes, apparently. For a second Roman’s expression flickers between betrayal, anger, dull acceptance, and just plain old _grief, _but then he seems to settle solidly on ‘anger’ as the emotion of choice. He lets out a furious growl, and snatches the guitar from where it’s still propped up next to the stage area. He swings it wildly, slamming it down dangerously close to the two of them. Logan lets go of Thomas’s hand as he pinwheels backwards wildly, yelling out in alarm. Roman swings again, something wild and animalistic in his eyes, and Logan slips and trips to the ground.

“Janus?” Thomas yells out, reaching his other hand out, backwards.

“Oh, so now you’re calling on _him _for backup. Against _me!_” Roman lets out a shrill, bitter laugh.

“_Yes,_” says Thomas. “I’m scared! You’re scaring me! _You just tried to murder me with an acoustic guitar!_”

Roman goes as pale as... as pale as someone who’s just realized that what they’ve just done was very, _very _stupid. He drops the guitar. It smashes to the ground, a pile of splinters and bent strings and warped wood panels. “Thomas – ”

“I know it’s not actually going to kill us but, _jeez_!” Thomas’s heart is beating faster, faster. “I know you’re angry, but do you really want me to die?” More panicked: “Janus? _Janus?_”

“Here,” says a voice that’s a bit more urgent than usual. And although he doesn’t take Thomas’s hand, Janus is standing there in the doorway when he glances back, one hand on the doorframe. “I see things have escalated somewhat.”

“Understatement,” Logan mutters, struggling back up to his feet.

“I gave you everything you wanted! You got the callback, you made it to the wedding, you didn’t have anything to worry about!” Roman says, eyes still fixed directly on Thomas. They’re watering faintly, tears glimmering in the dim, flashing light. “You even got a therapist, Logan said that’s who you need to go to see to fix any mind-related problems, and the coffeeshop is _functionally perfect, _so why weren’t you still happy about it?”

“It’s because you can’t just fix everything with a happy, cheerful story,” Janus says. He doesn’t sound angry. He actually sounds pretty sad.

“Did I _ask,_ _Lie_-mony _Snake-_it?”

“You did,” says Logan, “as a matter of fact.”

“Shut _up, _Logan!” Roman howls. “Shut up, shut _up, shut up – _Thomas, I’m giving you _everything you want _and more than that, I’m giving you everything I _have! _What do I need to do to be good enough for you? What do I need to _make? _What do I need to change about myself? I can be anyone you want me to be, you just need to _ask, _but it’s like you don’t even know what you want anymore!”

“I – you – we – ” Thomas says. “ – you’re putting me on the spot here. I...” His vision is blurry and unfocused, and when he blinks to clear it, a few stray tears slip down his cheeks. “Look, maybe I don’t know what I want!”

“True enough,” Janus says softly from behind him. “But I think I might.”

“_Oh, I highly doubt that!_” Roman screams, reaching unprecedented levels of angry hysteria. “What do _you _know – ”

“He wants what quite a lot of people want,” Janus says, cutting him neatly off. “What most people, through history, have searched endlessly for. A cornerstone of basic human existence.” A single gloved hand, extended upwards to the sky. “_Eudaimonia_.”

“I’m going to fucking obliterate you,” Roman growls. “I didn’t come here to get soapboxed at about words I don’t know or understand. Just speak _clearly _for once, or – ”

“Happiness!” Janus exclaims, eyes flashing dangerously. “He wants to be happy, deep down! Is that clear enough for you?”

“Technically speaking, translating the ancient Greek term ‘eudaimonia’ as just ‘happiness’ is incorrect,” Logan says, very very quickly, almost like he’s all-too-aware of the fact that he’s going to get cut off in a moment. “It, like a lot of Greek words, loses a lot of meaning if you are to merely condense it down to a single English word. In actuality, it would be more accurate to interpret it as ‘human flourishing’ or perhaps ‘wellbeing’ – ”

“_Stop telling me what I want!” _Thomas yells, slamming his hand against the nearest wall. Everybody stops talking, and turns to stare at him. “Just, _stop it!_ First Roman, and now you, and – and – shut up! Just... shut up!” He grinds his fists into his eyes, digs his fingers into his palm; tries to find even the _slightest _bit of grounding. “You all just never stop talking and I’m so _sick _of all of this. Why can’t you be quiet for, like, five seconds? Let me make my own decisions for once!”

“Stop,” Logan says sharply. So sharply that Thomas is momentarily too stunned to be angry anymore. “Janus is a part of you. Roman is, too. We all are.”

“I – I know that,” Thomas says, blinking – yeah, he knows that, why is that relevant, why – “Of course I know that. Why-?”

“Because you are acting as if we are separate entities to you entirely, when that is quite emphatically _not the case_.” Logan gestures to Roman with one sharp flourish. “Roman is the embodiment of your hopes and dreams, as the both of you are so fond of pointing out. Thomas, he only created this entire absurd scenario for you because you _both _wanted it.”

Thomas feels like he’s just been punched in the stomach, but also like he’s been watching the punch approach with agonizing slowness for the last few days, knowing that it’s coming and that there’s nothing he can do to stop it.

He turns away from Logan’s serious, intense stare, looking wildly to Roman’s look of reluctant agreement, and then back to the doorway, where Janus is standing. He’s pulled out that crooked cane of his from somewhere or other, and is leaning on it. Probably for dramatic effect, because Janus is all about the drama, but also he looks pretty exhausted, so maybe there’s some practicality to it too.

“You knew that already,” Janus says. “In fact – no metaphors or metaphysics about it – you straight-up-and-down _agreed _that you wanted to fantasize about this. That you wanted to forget about all of your problems for a while and commit to the deception. Don’t look at me like that, you know I’m right. And I think I’d know, considering, uh, _you know._”

Thomas grits his teeth, curls up his hands into fists. “Okay. So maybe I did. So maybe I wanted to have a happy daydream about things that don’t matter, where nothing ever goes wrong for me, where I can just _exist _and be happy! You know what, I think I agree with Roman – forget _me, _what’s wrong with _you? _Why can’t you let me be happy?”

“Exactly!” Roman says. “That’s exactly what I’ve been saying!”

“Anything wrong with us is also wrong with you by definition – ” Logan blurts, sounding frustrated.

“Which is _totally _what needs to be said right now, _thank you, Logan,_” Janus yells, cutting over him, and then, at a slightly more reasonable volume: “And of _course _I want you to be happy, Thomas, of _course – _we all want you to be happy, that was never in question, but you _must _see that this isn’t the way to do it. This is the sixth time in _two days _that you and Roman have dreamed up an overtly immersive, self-indulgent daydream that you’ve chosen to wallow in instead of paying attention to real life. And I am usually _all _about the self-indulgence, but this is... this is excessive, and unhealthy, and I’m worried and quite frankly _afraid _for you!” He stops abruptly, looking faintly shocked at himself, and glares at Thomas fiercely for several long seconds, before snapping, “_Now_ look what you’ve gone and done. You’ve forced me to be honest with my emotions.”

“Fuck,” says Thomas, staring.

“Pretty much,” Janus agrees.

“Fuck, I – six times? I could’ve sworn it wasn’t... I mean... I was just daydreaming.” Thomas squeezes his fists tight again. His fingernails dig into his skin, sharp and biting. Sharp enough to cut right through it. If he slashed them along the underside of his arms, followed the veins... “I’ve been paying attention, to everything else, I _have_. It’s just – ”

“You have been exceedingly distracted, as of late,” Logan says. “Your mind has been elsewhere, figuratively speaking.”

“I can’t stop thinking about it,” Thomas whispers. “Any of it. I _know _we’re done with the whole wedding-callback thing, and I know the plane’s crashing and I need to put on my damn oxygen mask already, but I almost don’t _want _to. It’s like... I’ve ruined everything already, so would putting it on make any difference? Maybe it’s better if I just...” He trails off.

“Suffocate so everyone doesn’t have to deal with you,” Roman says, and then looks _completely_ horrified at himself.

Thomas just nods, and buries his face in his hands for a long, long moment. And then he straightens up, and takes in a deep breath. “But I guess trying to distract myself like this isn’t working. If I want to...” He hesitates. Now that he’s not angry or panicked anymore, he can’t even manage to say it out loud. Not even to himself. He’s a wreck. He’s a pathetic mess of a human being. “...that. If I want to do that, there’s better ways of dealing with it. There’s got to be. Right?”

“Right,” says Janus reassuringly.

“Of course there are,” Logan says firmly. “There’s _always _a way to deal with it. A healthy way. And there’s always an opportunity for things to get better.”

“Oh,” says Roman. “So that’s it? All I’ve done is make things worse, and make us even more miserable than we already were; _fantastic. _Everything I’ve done so far is pointless!”

“Not pointless,” says Janus. “Never pointless. What you’ve done, my dear Roman, is neatly illustrate for us just how far things have gotten out of hand – and that’s far more valuable than you realize.”

“Are we done here?” Logan asks. “Because you can’t stick around in your own head all day, Thomas. I’m sorry, I really am – but you need to get on with your life.”

Roman still doesn’t look happy at all. He looks angry and miserable, pale and drawn, and Thomas has no idea how to go about fixing it. No idea if he should _try _to fix it at all. Roman always bounces back eventually, right? Why should this be any different? Maybe he can just ignore it and the problem will just –

“_Yes,_” Roman says. “Yes, I think we _are _done here.” He hunches his shoulders and begins to sink out.

“I love you, Roman,” says Thomas desperately, grabbing for his hand. He misses, and tries again, and misses, and on the third time he catches hold of it and doesn’t let go, and Roman’s stopped sinking out so that’s something, isn’t it? It’s got to be. “Roman, _I love you. _You – we – _I _made a mistake, and so you made a mistake by extension, and _yeah _it wasn’t great but it’s, there... there wasn’t any harm done. Not really. Not to anyone apart from us. Roman? I don’t hate you. The others don’t, either. Why won’t you look at me? Roman, I love you, _please._”

“Do you think if we keep telling each other that, we’re going to actually start believing it eventually?” Roman says dully, finally meeting his gaze.

Thomas jerks back like he’s been shot, dropping Roman’s hand. “You -”

“_Don’t_,” says Janus.

Roman’s smile has too many teeth, is a bit too maniac. He looks more like his brother than ever before. “What? Afraid of the truth? You’d _know _if I was lying, wouldn’t you?”

“Roman,” Logan says, looking pained and unhappy and... the word to use here is almost certainly _heartbroken. _“Please; I understand that you are upset and exhausted and angry, and – Roman, your emotions are understandable, and more than that they are _valid. _But lashing out like this isn’t the way to death with this. Although the turn of phrase may be entirely too on-the-nose to use here... you’re really only hurting yourself, behaving like this.”

Maybe it’s the way that Logan’s words are even so slightly condescending, even though it’s overwhelmingly obvious that he’s trying so, so hard not to be. Maybe it’s because the word _valid _has been used and overused so often that it’s honestly divested itself of any genuine meaning. Maybe it’s the slightly accusatory twist at the end, or maybe it’s something else entirely, but Roman does _not _like any of this.

“Oh, I know,” he says. “I _know _I’m only hurting myself, and I _know _I’m being unfair, but Specs – Logan? Do you want to know something? _I don’t actually care._”

And with that, he turns on his heel and starts walking away, and with ever step he sinks deeper and deeper into the ground until he’s completely gone.

“Oh, Christ,” says Thomas numbly. He feels like he’s drowning. Choking on water or loathing or something even thicker and more insidious. “I think I hate myself.”

And it seems like neither Janus nor Logan have anything to say to that. No clever words, no platitudes, no gentle explanations, nothing. Janus doesn’t even try to lie about it.

“We’re going to talk about this later,” Logan says seriously, hand on his arm.

Thomas grimaces, flinches away, folds back into himself – glances to Janus somewhat pleadingly.

Janus shakes his head. “Not getting away from it this time, I’m afraid. We need to deal with this at some point, and for once denial isn’t the option I’m inclined towards picking.”

Thomas wants to curl up into a ball and cry. But he’s already done that, like, twice so far today, and he’s not sure if you can get fatally dehydrated from imaginary dreamscape sobbing but he’s not sure he wants to test it. That’s not how he wants to die. He wants to die in so very many less painful ways.

“Okay,” he says instead of any of that. It goes without saying, really. He tries to thank them, but the words turn into ash in his throat and he just ends up nodding. “Okay,” he says again, “okay, all right. See you later.”

And there’s no flash of light and sudden transportation, or door to the real world to walk through; nothing like that. He just closes his eyes and then opens them again and he’s no longer hiding inside his own head.

There is a wall. Thomas stares at the wall. The real, tangible wall. Not some daydream wall or construct, just... the normal, boring real-world wall.

“Thomas, are you listening?” says someone. Is this a meeting? Yeah, it looks like a meeting. Something to do with merch, maybe.

He misses the coffeeshop already.

He bites his lip, forces himself to focus. “Yeah. Yeah, I – well, no, actually. I think I zoned out for a minute there.”

“More like fifteen,” says someone else. “You doing good there, bud?”

He forces a smile, and wishes that doing it didn’t feel quite so much like slicing his mouth open ear-to-ear with a rusty knife. “Just fine. Uh, can someone catch me up? You’ve got my full attention now, promise.”

And they do. He pays attention. Nothing about the state of the inside of his head can be remotely called _fine; _he’s not lying to himself about that anymore, but at the least he can pay attention and nod along when there’s actual work to be done.

Later, he’ll have a long talk with Janus, refusing to meet his mismatched stare but listening carefully nonetheless. He’ll think about what to say to Virgil, to Logan – to Roman, and he’ll start looking up therapists. Right now, all of that scares him unreasonably.

But it’s got to be done, because things have _got _to get better. They _have _to.

He doesn’t want to think about what he’ll do if they don’t. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aaaand that’s a wrap. If you’re here thinking ‘HEY THAT DOESN’T FEEL LIKE AN END COME BACK HERE AND FIX THINGS’ yeah you’re probably right, i really do need to do that. and it may happen. eventually! i can’t leave the boys sad forever, and next time there will probably (hopefully) be some sort of fluff, but at the time of writing i am somewhat unhappy and in a bit of a sad ‘Oh I Suck’ place myself, which means it’s projection time! 
> 
> thank you all so much for joining me on this, though! and please join me on tumblr at sometimes-love-is-enough, where I frequently talk about many things that don’t matter but make me happy anyway. i know you probably have questions about this thing. i'm more than happy to answer, because UH. yes. and also [I drew the coffeeshop from this arc](https://sometimes-love-is-enough.tumblr.com/post/623160927006621696/wishful-thinking-its-probably-bad-form-to-draw)!! with all the boys. come and look at it. it was fun to do. 
> 
> as always (always? have i done this before?) stay safe and be kind to each other and also i love you a lot!!

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [hate comments](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26719654) by [amybri2002](https://archiveofourown.org/users/amybri2002/pseuds/amybri2002)


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